People are inclined to forget that Holmes & Watson were only in their twenties when they first met in 'A Study in Scarlet. Nearly twenty years after depicting another distinguished gentleman in his twilight years in 'Gods & Monsters', Ian MacKellen & Bill Condon were reunited to continue the story of Sherlock Holmes - now 93 years old and still keeping bees - in a 'contemporary' setting now as long ago as the original stories in 'The Strand', when Conan Doyle himself would by then have been dead for 17 years.)
For once the story is told from the point of view of Holmes himself rather than Watson, and the actual mystery he recalls is less interesting than the present-day calamity involving bees he brings his deductive reasoning to in the present day. When Holmes finally deigns to see himself represented on the big screen it's not Basil Rathbone he sees (as it would almost certainly have been in 1947), but a pastiche called 'The Lady in Grey', featuring Frances Barber as a notably venomous dragon lady (or - in this particular telling - queen bee).
For once the story is told from the point of view of Holmes himself rather than Watson, and the actual mystery he recalls is less interesting than the present-day calamity involving bees he brings his deductive reasoning to in the present day. When Holmes finally deigns to see himself represented on the big screen it's not Basil Rathbone he sees (as it would almost certainly have been in 1947), but a pastiche called 'The Lady in Grey', featuring Frances Barber as a notably venomous dragon lady (or - in this particular telling - queen bee).