Since Conan Doyle’s death, the Holmes literature has expanded as other authors have penned pastiches, often constructed around imagined encounters between Holmes and other turn of the century figures. Perhaps the “golden age” of these imitations was the 1970s, thanks in large part to the success of Nicholas Meyer’s 1974 novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. Meyer imagined a tormented Holmes (played by Nicol Williamson) undergoing analysis to treat his cocaine addiction with none other than Sigmund Freud. Meyer scripted this lavish adaptation with an all-star cast, including Vanessa Redgrave and Laurence Olivier in supporting roles and a song by Stephen Sondheim.

They Might Be Giants grafts the Don Quixote story onto Holmes—in late-twentieth century Manhattan, where a mentally unbalanced judge has come to believe he is the singular detective. On the verge of being institutionalized, he becomes the patient of a sympathetic (female) psychiatrist named…Dr. Watson! Besides Don Quixote, They Might Be Giants also draws from The Madwoman of Chaillot in its tale of insanity as a form of protest against alienating modernity. While the film occasionally skirts uncomfortably close to outright whimsy, the lead performances by George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward ground the proceedings in an emotional reality that ultimately proves quite moving.