Literary adaptation
Works of literature have been adapted for film from the dawn of the industry. Some of the earliest examples come from the work of Georges Méliès, who pioneered many film techniques. In 1899, he released two adaptations — "Cinderella" based on the Brothers Grimm story of the same name and "King John", the first known film to be based on the works of Shakespeare. The 1900 film "Sherlock Holmes Baffled", directed by Arthur Marvin featured Arthur Conan Doyle's detective character Sherlock Holmes intruding upon a pseudo-supernatural burglary. The film, considered the first detective movie, ran for only 30 seconds and was originally intended to be shown in hand-cranked Mutoscope machines.
Patrick Macnee
Macnee appeared in "Magnum, P.I." (1984) as a retired, but delusional, British agent, who believed he was Sherlock Holmes, in a season four episode titled "Holmes Is Where the Heart Is". He played both Holmes and Dr. Watson on several occasions. He played Watson three times: once alongside Roger Moore's Sherlock Holmes in a TV film, "Sherlock Holmes in New York" (1976), and twice with Christopher Lee, first in "Incident at Victoria Falls" (1991), and then in "Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady" (1992). He played Holmes in another TV film, "The Hound of London" (1993), along with the 1996 TV film "". He is thus one of only a very small number of actors to have portrayed both Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson on screen.