How Old Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes Is

BBC’s Sherlock featured a younger Sherlock Holmes than in the books, but how old was Benedict Cumberbatch’s version of the Great Detective? Created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes made his debut in A Study In Scarlet in 1887, and went on to appear in various short stories and novels, becoming so popular that Conan Doyle was driven by fan pressure to resurrect the character after his death in “The Final Problem”, published in 1893. Sherlock Holmes has been adapted to all types of media for over 100 years, and recent adaptations to film and TV have made his cases popular again.

Among those is the BBC’s version of the famous detective. Simply titled Sherlock, the series was created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat and brought Conan Doyle’s characters to modern London. The series adapted many of the detective’s cases to the present day, which gave them some freshness and attracted a new wave of fans. The show’s popularity was also thanks to the main cast, especially Benedict Cumberbatch, who played the title character. Cumberbatch played a younger Sherlock, but how old was the character in the series?

Unlike other TV shows that one way or another end up revealing their main character’s age, Sherlock never gave it away, so it’s a bit tricky to calculate how old this version of the Great Detective is. To make this matter easier and give an answer, it’s generally assumed that Sherlock (along with Mycroft, John, and more) are the same age as the actors who played them. Benedict Cumberbatch was born on July 19, 1976, and Sherlock premiered in 2010, so his version of Sherlock Holmes would have been 34 years old when the series began. However, some fans have pointed out that, when following the Sherlock Holmes canon, the detective would have been younger.

Fans who have read the books (and who pay a lot of attention to details) have shared that in His Last Bow he’s described as a “tall, gaunt man of sixty, with clear-cut features”, so he might have been born around 1854, meaning he was 27 years old when he met Watson in 1881. With that in mind, and given that in the pilot episode of Sherlock he meets John, then Cumberbatch’s version could have also been 27 at the beginning of the series. Although the books don’t explicitly say that Sherlock and John met in 1881, only mentioning that John was wounded in 1880 and met the detective some time later, the official Arthur Conan Doyle site states they met in 1881, so Sherlock was in his late 20’s-early 30’s at the time.

Ultimately, the age of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes is open to interpretation, and he could be the same age as Cumberbatch or closer to the character’s age in canon, both of which make sense in the context of the series. Although Sherlock’s age in the BBC series doesn’t affect the character nor the plot, is a fun piece of trivia for viewers to figure out through different methods – very on-brand with the character.

About The Author

Adrienne Tyler
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Adrienne Tyler is a features writer for Screen Rant. She is an Audiovisual Communication graduate who wanted to be a filmmaker, but life had other plans (and it turned out great). Prior to Screen Rant, she wrote for Pop Wrapped, 4 Your Excitement (4YE), and D20Crit, where she was also a regular guest at Netfreaks podcast. She was also a contributor for FanSided’s BamSmackPow and 1428 Elm. Adrienne is very into films and she enjoys a bit of everything: from superhero films to heartbreaking dramas, to low-budget horror films. Every time she manages to commit to a TV show without getting bored, an angel gets its wings.

When she’s not writing, you can find her trying to learn a new language, watching hockey (go Avs!), or wondering what life would have been like had Pushing Daisies, Firefly, and Limitless not been cancelled. Breakfast food is life and coffee is what makes the world go round.

Guillermo del Toro said “hi” to her once. It was great.

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