The Return of the World's Greatest Detective is a 1976 American made-for-television mystery comedy film starring Larry Hagman as an inept motorcycle cop named Sherman Holmes, who, after sustaining a head injury, became convinced that he was actually Sherlock Holmes and as a result of his injury acquired formidable powers of observation and deduction.
Dean Hargrove and Roland Kibbee wrote the film's story directly for television, intending it to be a pilot for a series that would have been titled Alias Sherlock Holmes.
He is lying on the ground, reading a copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, when his motorcycle again falls over on its side—but this time on his head, causing a cranial injury that leaves him comatose.
Holmes adopts the habits and mode of dress (houndtooth-gray Inverness cape, and "full-bent" meerschaum smoking pipe) of the literary detective, along with a stylized UK English dialect.
These strange occurrences take place at the same time of a case that has been baffling the LAPD: scandals that appear to involve a judge, the Honorable Clement Harley (Charles Macauley).