 Gatiss has criticized recent television adaptations of the Conan Doyle stories as " too reverential and too slow " , aiming instead to be as irreverent to the canon as the 1930s and 1940s films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce , which were mostly set in the then @-@ modern interwar era . Benedict Cumberbatch 's Sherlock uses modern technology , such as texting , the internet , and GPS , to solve crimes . Paul McGuigan , who directed two episodes of Sherlock , says that this is in keeping with Conan Doyle 's character , pointing out that " [ i ] n the books he would use any device possible and he was always in the lab doing experiments . It 's just a modern @-@ day version of it . He will use the tools that are available to him today in order to find things out . " 
