Alex Kane’s Viewer & Listener Guide:
January 21-27, 2012.
“And there was nothing else?” Holmes asked. “Nothing of any importance.”
Not a vintage week for Holmes, with absolutely nothing new: never mind, there are quite a few old favourites along the way.
SATURDAY 21
Sherlock Holmes: The Last Vampyre (ITV3 on Freeview10 and Freesat115 also Sky119/Virgin117 at 10.35am)“The Sussex Vampire” has always struck me as one of the weaker stories in the Canon: there really isn’t all that much to get your teeth into in terms of plot and detecting! So stretching an already thin story into a two-hour special was always going to be a challenge. This dramatisation (first shown on January 27, 1993), although written by the usually reliable Jeremy Paul, doesn’t really rise to the challenge. Indeed, it quickly descends into the sort of hand-me-down gothic novel that Hammer might have tried to get away with two decades earlier.
Roy Marsden—better known for playing P.D. James’ Adam Dalgliesh—is absolutely wasted in the invented role of John Stockton. Marsden (with John Moffatt as Watson) was a pretty good Holmes in a series of Talking Tape Company dramatisations in the late 1980s. There’s a good supporting cast, though, including Freddie Jones, Maurice Denham and Keith Barron.
Worth noting, perhaps, that as well as being a very good Holmes to Timothy West’s equally good Watson in “Sherlock Holmes vs Dracula”, John Moffatt also played Dr Watson to Dinsdale Landen’s Holmes in “Sherlock Holmes Case”, and to Roy Marsden’s Holmes in a series of 30-minute canonical dramatisations by Grant Eustace.
And Dinsdale Landen had earlier been Watson to Robert Powell’s Holmes in “A Study in Scarlet”…
Sherlock (BBC3 on Freeview7/Freesat106 also /Sky115/Virgin106 at 8.00pm) Series 2, Episode 3—The Reichenbach Fall (First shown January 15, 2012 on BBC1) I’ll be reviewing the entire series in Crow’s Nest later in the week—but no, I’m not a fan.
*The BBC is releasing Sherlock: Series Two on Monday 23rd. It will have audio commentaries as well. Sherlock: Series One and Two will also be available as a combined boxed set. The official price for Series Two is £19.99, but this week’s Radio Times has it on offer for £12.99. I suspect it will be cheaper on Amazon or elsewhere, particularly if you are willing to wait a few months.
Sherlock Holmes Special (Sky Showcase on Sky303/Virgin403 at 10.50am, repeated at 2.05am Sunday 22nd) A short documentary on the making of the sequel to Sherlock Holmes (2009).
Sherlock Holmes, 2009 (Sky Showcase on Sky303/Virgin403 at 11.10am, repeated at 11.45pm) While Robert Downey Jnr gives us a Holmes we have never really seen before (and I won’t complain about that) I still think this film is let down by a lousy plot, gorgonzola script and an awful lot of hamming-it-up from a cast who should know better. Guy Ritchie doesn’t seem to have understood that Holmes is a ‘thinking machine’ first and foremost.
*I’ll be reviewing A Game of Shadows (along with the BBC’s Sherlock) in Crow’s Nest. I would welcome your feedback: alexkane221b@hotmail.co.uk
MONDAY 23
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (ITV3 on Sky119/Virgin117 at 8.00am)
Season 1, Episode 1—A Scandal In Bohemia (April 24, 1984) I remember watching this episode for the first time and thinking “Wow! Brett is Sherlock Holmes.” I still prefer Hardwicke to David Burke, but this first series wouldn’t have worked without Burke’s understated and occasionally subtle interpretation of the character. Gayle Hunnicutt is an ideal Irene Adler. And let’s not forget the wonderful Rosalie Williams as Mrs Hudson—a great piece of casting and a great piece of acting.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (ITV3 on Sky119/Virgin117 at 4.05pm)
Season 1, Episode 2—The Dancing Men (May 1, 1984) A very understated adaptation by Anthony Skene, with excellent work from Tenniel Evans as Hilton Cubitt and Betsy Brantley as his wife, Elsie.
Evans’ great uncle was Sir John Tenniel, who was one of Punch’s greatest cartoonists (as was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s uncle Richard) and illustrator of the original Alice In Wonderland: and his great-great aunt was Mary Ann Evans, better known as the great Victorian novelist George Eliot. She and Conan Doyle wrote stories for the Cornhill Magazine. She also wrote for Blackwood’s Magazine. Doyle had sent them a short story—The Haunted Grange at Goresthorpe—in the late 1870s, but it was rejected by them and remained in their vaults until 1942, when it transferred to the National Library of Scotland. It was finally published in March 2001 (by the Arthur Conan Doyle Society). Not a great work, perhaps, but it has characters who have overtones of Holmes and Watson.
TUESDAY 24
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (ITV3 on Sky119/Virgin117 at 8.00am)
Season 1, Episode 2—The Dancing Men (May 1, 1984) SEE MONDAY
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (ITV3 on Sky 119/Virgin 117 at 4.05pm)
Episode 3, First Series—The Naval Treaty (May 8th, 1984)
I think that the episodes dramatised by Jeremy Paul are amongst the best: and this is one of my favourites. Paul went on to write The Secret of Sherlock Holmes for Brett and Hardwicke in 1988, which had a very successful run in the West End.
WEDNESDAY 25
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (ITV3 on Sky 119/Virgin 117 at 8.00am and 12.55am)
Episode 3, First Series—The Naval Treaty (May 8th, 1984) SEE TUESDAY
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (ITV3 on Sky 119/Virgin 117 at 4.05pm)
Episode 4, First Series—The Solitary Cyclist (May 15th, 1984) A nice little episode dramatised by the late Alan Plater. He was one of British TV’s most accomplished scriptwriters and adapters, with credits including Z Cars, Soft Softly: Taskforce and the Beiderbecke series.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (ITV3 on Sky119/Virgin117 at 8.00pm)
Season 1, Episode 2—The Dancing Men (May 1, 1984) SEE MONDAY
THURSDAY 26
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (ITV3 on Sky 119/Virgin 117 at 7.55am)
Episode 4, First Series—The Solitary Cyclist (May 15th, 1984) SEE WEDNESDAY
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (ITV3 on Sky 119/Virgin 117 at 4.00pm)
Episode 5, First Series—The Crooked Man (May 22nd, 1984) Dramatised by Alfred Shaughnessy, best known as the script editor of the hugely influential and massively popular TV series, ‘Upstairs Downstairs.’ Norman Jones, who played ‘The Crooked Man,’ was a well known face on British television, although never a star. Denys Hawthorne, who played Col. Barclay, was born in Northern Ireland and graduated in law from Queen’s University.
Paul Temple and Steve (BBC Radio 4 at 11.00pm)
Episode 1 of 8: The Notorious Dr Belasco
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Temple mysteries, particularly the series that still turns up on Radio 4 Extra at regular intervals. This is a new production—first broadcast in June 2010—of the 1947 detective serial and sounds pretty good; with Crawford Logan making an excellent Temple and Gerda Stevenson splendid as his wife, Steve. The producer, Patrick Rayner, was one of the key people behind the Merrison/Williams Sherlock Holmes complete canon for Radio 4.
FRIDAY 27
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (ITV3 on Sky 119/Virgin 117 at 7.55am)
Episode 5, First Series—The Crooked Man (May 22nd, 1984 SEE THURSDAY
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (ITV3 on Sky 119/Virgin 117 at 4.00pm)
Episode 6, First Series—The Speckled Band (May 29, 1984) Another excellent dramatization from Jeremy Paul, with Jeremy Kemp in terrific form as Roylott. It’s a very easy role to turn into a sort of pantomime villain, but Kemp manages to make him a more rounded character than we know just from the short story. Rosalyn Landor, who plays Helen Stoner, is now a multi award winning narrator of audio books in America.