Soviet adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. As a fun fact, Watson gets shot during the first Anglo-Afghan war, and Holmes deduces this using his method, although the location of the shot changes depending on the book or film. As far as I know, Afghanistan has never been changed for some other country, even remaining in the British TV Show ‘Sherlock’ (only this time it was the US invasion of said country), but here Holmes mentions that Watson was in “the East”, probably because the film was released on 1979, very recently after the entry of Soviet forces into Afghanistan.
Holmes is opposed to the official police system of Scotland Yard, because the main thing for him is to help, not just to punish. This, it seems to me, is the secret of the enduring love of readers and viewers for Sherlock Holmes, the living personification of loyalty and reliability — qualities that people have always needed so much. That was the reason why we were so willing to work on these films.
— Igor Maslennikov, Aurora, July 1985