WATS ON TV
OK, it may not be “Sherlock everywhere” but there are still plenty of opportunities to watch our favourite detective (and his best friend) during the festive fortnight.
If we’ve missed a trick, you may wish to put us straight re any errors or omissions on the Holmes front. And before you mention it, the reason we haven’t included any Radio coverage is because there is nothing to cover (or have we seen and not observed, again?).
FREEVIEW CHANNELS
ITV3 are continuing to run the great Granada Sherlock Holmes series – check the listings for further details. For many of us, no Christmas would ever be quite complete without a smattering of Jeremy Brett.
On Christmas Day at 10.50am, ITV3 is showing Carry on Screaming (1966). “It was the nearest they ever got to a Carry on Sherlock,” according to Alex Kane.
BBC3 concludes its repeat run of Sherlock Series 3 with episode 3 of 3, this Saturday (20th) at 9.05pm.
DRAMA has scheduled the two Tiger Aspect Sherlock Holmes productions, produced for the BBC in 2002 and 2004, in its Christmas line-up. The first of these was a new adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles, first shown on Boxing Day 2002 on BBC1. Pencilled in for Tuesday 30th at 7pm, it stars Richard Roxburgh as Sherlock Holmes with Ian Hart as Watson.
There was a lot of excitement among people like us about this production at the time, probably because we’d been starved of any new Holmes on TV since the Granada series had ended in 1994.
“Does this new version do justice to Holmes, or to the story itself? The answer to those questions must be an unambiguous NO!” said Alex Kane in Mayday Mayday (no. 24, Jan 2003).
Brushing aside any criticism of their take on The Hound, Tiger Aspect gave the Holmes legend a second shot, only this time in a brand new non-canonical tale – Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking. Starring Rupert Everett as Sherlock Holmes with Ian Hart reprising his role as Watson, it was originally shown on BBC1 on Boxing Day 2004. Drama is showing it on New Year’s Eve at 7pm.
“In essence this was a simply very expensive hook to hang a lurid, unpleasant and very unconvincing plot. Actually, plot is too generous a description,” wrote Alex Kane, in his review for Mayday Mayday (no. 44, Jan 2005).
SKY/VIRGIN
SKY LIVING isn’t taking an Elementary break over Christmas (Hooray!) so fans will be able to catch episodes 7 and 8 of the new Season 3 sooner than we might have expected. Elementary is on Tuesdays at 9pm (repeated Sundays).
TCM is screening nine of the twelve films in the Universal Sherlock Holmes series starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce this Saturday (20th). This is a back-to-back run with a very early start, at 8.20am. Seven of these classics are being repeated again the following day (21st). The TCM schedulers obviously like The House of Fear (1944) so much that it’s getting two further screenings, on the 26th and 27th December.
ALIBI is repeating Sherlock Series 1, daily from Tuesday 23rd at 9pm, followed by Series 2, also daily at 9pm, from Boxing Day.
WATCH has lined up Finding Neverland (2004) for Tuesday 23rd at 9pm. Jonny Depp stars as J.M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan. It’s a fictional account of the creation of this perennial children’s favourite which also stars Dustin Hoffman and Kate Winslet.
Conan Doyle was a friend of Barrie, as he was of many other writers of the time, so you may like to look out for him. It’s a relatively small part (if memory serves us right), played by Ian Hart. Yes, this is the same Ian Hart, who played a less than impressive Watson in the two Tiger Aspect productions referred to above (see under Drama).
This Guide was compiled with the help of the Radio Times “legendary double issue” (20 December 2014 – 2 January 2015). Other listings magazines are available, we hasten to add.
“The compliments of the season” to everyone!
Late Post 17 December 2014
Alex Kane tells us that the Bonanza Bonanza channel (Sky and Freesat only) is running episodes from the Ronald Howard TV series.