Harry King Television is developing Animated Sherlock, a new animated Sherlock Holmes series built for adults and based on Nicholas Sercombe’s The Unexpurgated Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The project is being headed by David Lipman, who is working directly with Sercombe, while Michael Ryan and Tim John are also attached.
The reason it is drawing attention now is simple: Sherlock is back in a form that is trying to do something different. Sercombe says the animation route lets the team reimagine Holmes on a grander, more imaginative and risqué scale than before, and the series is being shaped around one mystery per season rather than a case-of-the-week format. That makes the working title more than a label. It points to a version of Holmes that is designed to stretch across episodes instead of resolving in a single hour.
The series also leans into familiar canon while changing the frame around it. Episodes will draw elements from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, but the project will expand the backstories of Sherlock, Watson and Moriarty. Sercombe’s books go further still, presenting the original tales as polished down to satisfy Victorian moral standards and, in his telling, restoring the full, sordid truth. That is where the new adaptation departs from the more familiar, often mainstream Holmes tradition.
For decades, Holmes adaptations have usually been pitched toward broad audiences, whether in series such as Elementary, Watson and Sherlock, or in the films led by Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law and Guy Ritchie. Animated Sherlock is trying to move the character in the opposite direction, into adult animation with a sharper edge and a looser rulebook. Sercombe says the team is building its own Sherlock universe that feels timeless and fresh, and he has framed the project as a way to surprise viewers and give the character new energy.
What is missing is the most basic piece of information: timing. There is currently no release timeline for Animated Sherlock, so the project is real but still in development. For readers trying to follow the next turn in the Holmes revival, that means the question is no longer whether another adaptation is coming. It is how soon this one will be ready to show what it means by a risqué Sherlock.
