Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is surely one of the most fascinating characters in modern fiction, having inspired countless imitations, societies of fans who pretend he is real (and some people who really believed he was a real-life person), and numerous literary pastiches and stage and screen adaptations. He is just real enough to fascinate, and just unreal enough to provide room for audiences to use their imaginations in understanding him.

With so much Holmes-work having been done over the decades since his first appearance in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887, it’s very difficult for an adapter to find a usable new angle. Thus it’s impressive that the producers of the new BBC series Sherlock have managed to do exactly that, and with a exceedingly simple strategy. They’ve moved Holmes, Watson, and the stories’ other principle characters to modern London.

The show,which ran in July and August of this year in Britain and will be on the PBS series Masterpiece Mystery starting tonight (check local listings for times.), superbly translates the atmosphere, ambiance, and concerns of the Doyle stories to the modern day.

There are many, many differences from the original stories, of course, but the most important elements survive the translation well—especially Holmes and Watson. This Holmes (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) is rather younger than the one in most screen adaptations—apparently in his late twenties or early thirties (and that’s the correct age for the Holmes of the first stories). He doesn’t have a an aquiline nose, but he is very much like Doyle’s Holmes in other ways. He’s tall and lean, speaks rapidly and with much emphasis and enthusiasm, moves abruptly and with determination, and gestures emphatically with his hands when he speaks. Holmes reveals extremely personal things about others without realizing that it will embarrass them.

The show’s Watson (Martin Freeman) is a little older and very much like the Watson of the stories: an ex-soldier, strong, determined, and soft-spoken but also a bit insecure. The pilot episode, “A Study in Pink,” depicts the initial meeting of this new Holmes and Watson, and it amusingly updates the famous bravura string of deductions in which Holmes draws numerous conclusions about Watson’s background, with this one taking place in a taxicab and involving Holmes’s observations about Watson’s cell phone.

That’s emblematic of the way the show ties together the past and present, undoubtedly a lesson co-creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss learned well in working on Doctor Who. “A Study in Pink” is suffused with the elements of modern life, including cell phones, computers, the internet (Holmes even has a website), the Iraq and Afghan wars, ubiquitous security cameras, and the like. Much of the episode takes place at night, and though there’s no fog, Holmes’s contemporary London is visually appealing and highly romantic, a vibrant, lively metropolis that can easily accommodate both great good and immense evil, like that of the original stories.

There are some inventive visuals, and the action scenes in particular convey the sense of adventure and joy in pursuing the most difficult and dangerous dangerous quarry in the world: criminals.

The story concerns the apparently linked suicides of several Londoners, and the investigation leads Holmes to a suspenseful and intellectually involving encounter with the killer. It doesn’t have a particularly fair or involving puzzle, but that was not really the biggest strong point of the Doyle stories, either. It’s all about the chase, the danger, the excitement, and the ultimate triumph.

The showmakers do a good job of making the mystery element come alive for TV viewers. For example, the clues and deductions are indicated by onscreen supertitles as Holmes investigates the crime scenes, as are text messages the characters receive. There are also some amusing moments in which modern life tears at elements of the original conception of the characters. A female police detective, for example, tells Watson that she believes Holmes is a psychopath who will eventually begin committing crimes himself. Similarly, the episode has some fun with the common assumption that anyone and everyone might be a homosexual. (It does not, however, suggest that Holmes is a homosexual, simply that the assumption is so easy for people to make in the current day.)

In all, the show is a fond, sincere, and rather successful attempt to bring the characters to modern audiences. It’s not an overly faithful adaptation, but it’s an affectionate one and basically respectful toward its source. This Holmes and Watson are well worth investigating.