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.