15 Best British TV Shows Of The Decade

Ever since The Sopranos redefined TV as a prestige medium, movie stars have migrated to the small screen for the juiciest roles going. Now, we’re going back in the other direction: telly is making movie stars out of character actors. Sherlock transformed Tim from The Office and a guy with a funny name to thespians on the precipice of the A list through a bold re-imagining of the legendary detective and his trusty sidekick.

Set in a sinister modern London, Benedict Cumberbatch plays Holmes as more machine than man, an unstoppable solver of crimes with limited people skills. His ability to crack cases is illustrated with onscreen subtitles walking the audience through the clues he’s picking up, the tiny tics and threads we’d never think to unravel.

It’s a boldly unsympathetic performance from a leading man - Cumberbatch never tries to make his Holmes likeable or even relatable. The thrill is in watching him get to the bottom of another squalid story piece by piece. Martin Freeman adds heart as war veteran John Watson, the one person with a human connection to the maverick mystery solver.

The stories are brilliantly crafted, complex and deep but rarely unfair - the attentive viewer is generally given the chance to work out the twist so long as they’re paying enough attention. The future of the show is up in the air, but Sherlock has been brilliant for British TV, taking an intellectual property that can be treated with stuffy reverence and delivering a fresh take. It’s the best kind of revamp: remaining true to the core of the character, while forging a path entirely of its own.