Sherlock: 10 Best Music Compositions

10. 'Sherlock' Theme Tune

All episodes It's only thirty-nine seconds, but what a fantastic thirty-nine seconds it is! The theme tune of a show defines its overall tone, and Arnold and Price succeed in striking that perfect balance between old and new that the rest of the show also excels at. The strings take us back to Victorian London where Conan Doyle's Holmes and Watson first solved crimes, while the percussion still keeps us in the modern day. The original theme tune, heard in the unaired pilot episode, had a much more modern style and instrumentation, matching the harder emphasis the pilot had on modernising the classic literary icon that is Sherlock Holmes. The now-official theme tune, though, and the show itself is a well-balanced combination of classic and modern Holmes, drawing in a new audience, yet never alienating fans of the Conan Doyle canon. The theme tune is remixed several times throughout the show, but the original remains the best version (although some may argue for the "Stag Night" remix in "The Sign of Three" €“ more on that later). Without fail, though, a true fan can never get tired of hearing those opening drumbeats at the beginning of every episode, for within those thirty-nine seconds, you know you are at the start of something incredible.