Lucy Worsley's 'Holmes vs Doyle' Is Not Just an Excuse to Wear Deerstalker Hats

Depending on how you feel about the way Sherlock Holmes has spawned seemingly infinite adaptations, he might feel like a comforting old friend or a stain that won’t come out. To Sherlock’s author, Arthur Conan Doyle, it was almost certainly the latter. That twisted relationship between creator and creation is the subject of Lucy Worsley’s latest documentary series, Holmes vs. Doyle. 

If you’re counting along at home, there are at least three Sherlock Holmes adaptations slated for 2025: CBS’s Watson, the CW’s Sherlock & Daughter, and Amazon’s Young Sherlock, with a third Enola Holmes film in progress, too. Lucy Worsley, a historian, author, and presenter, has her own spin on the Sherlock story, but it has a lot more to do with Doyle than the others. Worsley was last seen on American screens investigating the life of Doyle’s contemporary, Agatha Christie, in Agatha Christie: Lucy Worsley on the Mystery Queen. Worsley might be the perfect person to bridge the divide between Holmes and Doyle. She is a lifelong fan of Sherlock Holmes and strongly identifies with the character, but like Doyle, she is a writer who shares his interest in detective work.

Worsley is known for dressing in period costumes to bring the worlds of her historical inquiry to life, but you won’t see her decked in a deerstalker for much of this series. (As Worsley discovers in the series, the deerstalker first became part of Sherlock’s wardrobe in an illustration, not from Doyle’s original text.) There is plenty of fun to be had in Holmes vs Doyle, but it focuses on the more serious aspects of Doyle’s life, like grief, war, imperialism, and Doyle’s fruitless desperation to create a legacy beyond Sherlock.

The series is framed as a fight to the death between Doyle and Sherlock, focusing less on Sherlock’s stories and more on the factors shaping Doyle’s life as a writer, including Holmes. The series begins with the literal and figurative births of the two opponents. First, Worsley traces Doyle’s early life with his mentally ill father and the creation of Sherlock, followed by Doyle’s attempts to find life beyond what he saw as "lowbrow commercial success," including writing war propaganda and investigating a real-life crime. She also highlights similarities between Sherlock’s powers of deduction and psychic techniques which increasingly captured Doyle’s morbid fascination. 

There is not much to say about Doyle and Sherlock that hasn’t already been said. Still, Worsley uses extraordinary and bizarre archival materials to introduce viewers to lesser-known chapters of his life. Among the most arresting are whimsical drawings done by Doyle’s father while institutionalized and a piece of a horse’s hide from the court case that Doyle investigated himself. Worsley also examines early drafts of the first Sherlock story, including his original name: “Sherrinford.” Worsley remarks that Doyle’s early drafts make him seem “vulnerable,” just one of many ways that the series excels at highlighting his humanity.

In this fight to the death, the winner is clear. Sherlock Holmes endures on the page, stage, screen, and almost every imaginable medium. Doyle could never step out of Sherlock’s shadow, and the works he considered his best have been largely forgotten. However, Worsley revives Doyle if only for the three-hour duration of the series. Despite the “Holmes” in the series title, Worsley presents Doyle as his own man who is stunningly human in all his flaws and desires.

Lucy Worsley's Holmes vs. Doyle premieres on Sunday, December 8, 2024, at 8 p.m. ET on most local PBS stations, the PBS app, and the PBS Documentary Prime Video Channel, and runs through mid-December. As always, check your local listings.