Staff producer/director David Johnston assumed overall responsibility for the serial, and cast Roger Rees and Crawford Logan as Holmes and Watson.
The show was broadcast in May 1988 and when audience and press reaction proved favourable, Coules and Johnston suggested going on to do two more of the novels: A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four. The BBC powers-that-be agreed but insisted that both leading parts should be recast. Clive Merrison and Michael Williams were offered the roles.
Episode one of A Study in Scarlet was broadcast on 3rd November 1989, with episode two the following week. The Sign of the Four followed in December. Illness prevented David Johnston from directing the shows, which were handled instead by Ian Cotterell, with Johnston remaining as producer.
The productions and the new leads were a success, and once again further instalments were suggested. However, Coules' plan to dramatise six of the best of the short stories was rejected in favour of an alternative proposal: the BBC had decided to tackle the entire canon of fifty-six stories, plus the remaining novels, the first time this had ever been attempted with the same two actors in the leads.
Under new producers Enyd Williams and Patrick Rayner, the project was launched in January 1991 with the first series of short stories The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
