And so we reached the end of series two with The Reichenbach Fall, the last of a miserly three episodes. I suppose this criminally meagre ration leaves us eager for more, though the way Benedict Cumberbatch's career is rocketing skywards and Hollywood-wards, it might have been wise to shoot some more episodes with him while he still had the overcoat on and the violin to hand.

So overt it’s covert. That’s how the famous detective explains away the crassness of his disguises. In this newest instalment of the latest cinematic incarnation of the Holmesian myth, the detective rummages through the dressing-up box for silly beards, false gnashers, stupid specs. This Holmes even wears a type of babygrow whose patterning comically blends into the decor. As with Sherlock Holmes, so with Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. This is another film by Guy Ritchie disguised as a detective story by Arthur Conan Doyle. You couldn’t ever mistake it for the real thing.

A few years ago I chanced upon something truly surreal. I was driving along a track in New Zealand. The way you do. There was a field on the left. In it there was a man sitting on a portable chair, a sketchpad in his lap, a pencil in his hand. Gathered in front of him, like a cluster of attentive disciples, was a tight semi-circle of cows. The man was wearing a black suit in a style popular at the end of the 19th century. The surreal bit is that, despite the grizzly beard, this was Columbo. None other than.

There was a risk that this new take on the indestructible sleuth of Baker Street might be smothered at birth by a dust-storm of pre-publicity, with coverage stretching from the tabloids to Andrew Marr (who really seems to believe he's an arts correspondent, and not just Alfred E Neuman's long-lost twin brother).

How do you construct a compelling play about the greatest of fictional detectives without either mystery or reveal? The cryptic answer, in the form of Jeremy Paul’s 1988 theatrical two-hander The Secret of Sherlock Holmes, is far from elementary.

If James Bond could survive Roger Moore and George Lazenby, there must be grounds for optimism that Sherlock Holmes will eventually recover from this brutal mauling by Robert Downey Jr, under the gaudy directorial eye of Guy Ritchie. Holmesophiles are a doughty bunch, and will probably just carry on watching Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett as if Mr Madonna never happened.