Sherlock Holmes (1939 film series) "Rathbone "was" Sherlock Holmes". The choice of Nigel Bruce as Watson was more contentious, with Davies pointing out that "Bruce's characterisation bore little relation" to the written Watson, even though the portrayal eventually produced "an endearingly avuncular figure". The historian David Parkinson agrees, and wrote that Bruce's "avuncular presence provided the perfect counterbalance to Rathbone's briskly omniscient sleuth". Barnes notes that, despite the criticisms against him, Bruce rehabilitated Watson, who had been a marginal figure in the cinematic Holmes canon to that point: "after Bruce, it would be a near-unthinkable heresy to show Holmes without him". With the combination of
Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes 1976 "The Return of the World's Greatest Detective" policemen Sherman Holmes suffers from a blow to the head resulting in him thinking he is Sherlock Holmes. John Cleese starred as Holmes' grandson - Arthur Sherlock Holmes - in the comic TV special "The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It" (1977). Arthur Lowe played Dr. William Watson, the original doctor's grandson. Between 1979 and 1986, Soviet television produced a series of five television films at the Lenfilm movie studio, "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson". The series were split into eleven episodes and starred