Now that WPP brought that up, I do remember that episode with Jude Law. As for Edward Hardwicke, he was the second Watson. David Burke was in the first season or two of Brett's "Sherlock Holmes" but I looked him up and he left the series to accept an invitation to join the Royal Shakespeare Company along with his wife.
Christopher Plummer (a relatively short Holmes, at 5' 10") with James Mason as Watson in Murder by Decree (1979):
Found this list, and if accurate, Robert Downey Jr. is the shortest live action Holmes.
I kinda thought so but I wanted to be sure.
John Cleese: 6′5″(196cm)
2. Sir Christopher Lee: 6′4.5″(194cm)
3. Nicholas Rowe: 6′4″(193cm)
4.Guy Henry: 6′3.5″(192cm)
5.Tom Baker: 6′3″(191cm)
6.Peter O Toole: Probably 6′2″(188cm)
7.Sir Basil Rathbone: 6′1.5″(187cm),May be 6′2′(188cm) tall at peak and weighs 190 lbs.
8.Sir Michael Caine: 6′1.5″(187cm).
9.Peter Cook: 6′1.5″(187cm)
10.John Nevile: 6′1.5″(187cm)
11.Jeremy Brett: 6′1″(185cm)
12. Sir Roger Moore: 6′1″(185cm)
13.Benedict Cumberbatch: 5′11.5″-6′0″(182cm-183cm).
13. Peter Cushing:5′11.5″(182cm)
Others were:Ian Mckellen (5′11″),Rupert Everett(6′4″),Robert Downey Jr (5′8.5″),Johnny Lee Miller(5′10″),Frank Langella(6′3″),Matt Frewer(6′3″), John D Arcy(6′3″),Christopher Plummer (5′10.5″), John Barrymore(5′9.75″), Robert Stephens(6′1″),Nicol Williamson (6′2″), Clive Brook(5′11″) and Vasily Livanaov(5′10″). I don't know what are the heights of Arthur Wontner and William Gillette. What are their heights?
According to IMDB, Sir Roger Moore was 6' 1 3/4", so if that's accurate then I would have rounded up and called him 6' 2". Who knows. Anwyay, here he is in 1976, taking time off from playing James Bond to portray Holmes in the TV movie Sherlock Holmes in New York (with Patrick Macnee as an inappropriately dim Watson):
I know that Holmes is tall in the stories, but I don't recall Conan Doyle every giving an exact figure as to his height. Given it's Victorian times, Holmes would have appeared taller to the average person.
I used to work as a historical interpreter at Fort Edmonton, in period dress, and when I showed guests around the chief factor's house, I was always pointing out the short beds, because people were so much smaller then.
It's modern nutrition that has caused people of European origins to grow so much in height over the last century. My nephews all tower over me.
“Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.” Goethe
I couldn't find an exact height for William Gillette, but I would suggest that he was certainly over six foot, based on photographs and this quote from an interview published in 1900:
My greatest disadvantage in those days was my height. I was so tall beside the average actor they couldn't place me.
But there are always people who are noticeably taller than the average for the time. I am always surprised by how tall Captain James Cook was, especially for someone who pursued a life at sea in the cramped ships of the 18th C. At Captain Cook's Cottage in Melbourne (actually his parents' cottage, reassembled stone by stone from Yorkshire), there is a life size statue of him which is about 6'2". I'm 6' and was constantly ducking my head to go through the doorways in the cottage, so life for Cook in Georgian England must have been a real pain.
Andrew Salmon has done a couple of Sherlocks for the FIGHT CARD series of pulp adventures, about Holmes' adventures in the London boxing scene in the 1890s. Gathered in this collection.
Peter David had a cool theory about the final struggle between the Professor and Holmes at Reichenbach-- he thinks Moriarty was committing suicide-by-cop. Holmes was way younger, an expert boxer and singlestick champion, and the Professor was an old guy with what sounds like Parkinson's from Doyle's description (the 'reptilian oscillation' of the head.) And yet he arranged matters so his final confrontation with Holmes would be alone, along a path at the edge of a cliff. Such a master manipulator must have known fisticuffs were inevitable and he had no chance against Sherlock Holmes in a fair fight. Ergo, he WANTED Holmes to kill him. QED.
In my own small contributions to Sherlockian lore I've speculated that Holmes picked up some Asian martial arts moves during the Great Hiatus, when he was traveling through Nepal. In the new one there's a bit where I had him take our a gunman that way and Rob Davis did such a great job with the illustration of Holmes massaging his karate hand afterward that I bought the original off him.
Incidentally, if you are a Holmes person, i think you'd enjoy the Consulting Detective series, and I don't say that just because stories of mine are in them. There are all sorts of pastiches featuring Holmes and Watson updated, gender-flipped, meeting famous folks of the time both fictional and real like Dracula or Oscar Wilde... but hardly anyone just does straight Holmes stories any more. Well, that's what we do in Consulting Detective... just straight-up Holmes and Watson fighting crime in Victorian London. I've done six of them so far and it's always fun.
I think this TV movie gets an unfair rap. I think it's great fun. And it features John Huston as possibly my favourite screen Moriarty. And Charlotte Rampling as Irene Adler.
And Macnee is one of the select group of actors to have portrayed both Watson and Holmes, having played Sherlock in the 1993 TV movie The Hound of London. However, I have yet to find a copy of this.