Each ages gets the Sherlock Holmes it deserves.
From a piece in the Los Angeles Review of Books...
During World War II, we got the ineffably patriotic (and anachronistic) Sherlock of Basil Rathbone; in the seventies, Nicole Williamson gave us the drug-addicted Holmes. Later still, we had the twitchily neurotic Holmes of Jeremy Brett. Each performer's portrayal (and the same is true for Watson) is informed by the form and pressure of the age in which he lives, what society values or condemns or overlooks. Even the economics of filmmaking are bound to contribute to differing visions — and versions — of Holmes.
Which brings us to the dilemma of Holmes in a postliterate age, and the larger question of how one adapts literature for the movies, for an audience that has never read the original.
The answer, I fear, is a depressing one — depressing, at any rate, to those of us who grew up reading and loving the original, written incarnations of Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Huckleberry Finn, King Solomon's Mines, Treasure Island, and The Three Musketeers.
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