Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the most beloved figure in mystery fiction, with ardent followers who have relished the countless movies built around Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about the detective with astounding powers of deduction. TCM proudly presents a seven-film Holmes marathon beginning with The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), a Hammer Films treatment of the much-filmed story in which Peter Cushing emerged as the quintessential Holmes for British audiences, just as Basil Rathbone was for Americans.

Next comes a series of five Holmes adventures in their TCM premieres. Murder at the Baskervilles (1937) stars Arthur Wontner as Holmes, who returns to the Baskervilles estate to solve the murder of a racehorse groom. Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942) finds Rathbone as Holmes, with Nigel Bruce as his blustery sidekick, Dr. Watson, and Lionel Atwill as their archenemy, Moriarty. Rathbone and Bruce also share their Holmes/Watson chemistry in Sherlock Holmes and the Woman in Green (1945), Sherlock Holmes in Dressed to Kill (1946) and Sherlock Holmes in Terror by Night (1946).

Billy Wilder's revisionist The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) offers an affectionate portrait of Holmes (Robert Stephens) while amusingly focusing on his cocaine habit and ambiguous sexuality. Colin Blakely is Dr. Watson, and Genevieve Page is the woman who causes Holmes to fall in love for the first time.