1. The Red Headed League
Arguably the most enjoyable, entertaining and creative of all Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, The Red Headed League is ripe for adaptation to the smart and knowing BBC series. In this story, ginger haired pawnbroker Jabez Wilson is picked from hundreds of applicants after a newspaper advertises to join "The Red Headed League" and receive an impressive salary for very little work (copying out the Encyclopaedia Britannica) thanks to the legacy of a generous ginger of years gone by. It turns out that this is an elaborate scheme by a famous bankrobber, John Clay, and his redheaded accomplice to get Wilson away from the shop so that they can tunnel to the bank behind. The image of huge groups of redheaded applicants is an impressively visual and comedic one that would work very well on TV and would be fun to play with in a modern context: X-Factor style auditions, perhaps, or a gingers-only Facebook group or, best of all, a red headed flashmob. After setting up the Red Headed League as its initial mystery and the famous thief Clay as the villain, the plot could take any number of twists and turns. While a completely straight adaptation of The Red Headed League may not quite be enough to sustain an hour and a half run-time, it would definitely be the kick off point for a great whole episode with a few embellishments as we saw in Study in Pink, which started the same and then took its own course.