Les souvenirs de Sherlock Holmes

The Case book of Sherlock Holmes isn't perhaps the golden era for Jeremy Brett and co, it's still an almost brilliant run for the enigmatic detective. The production values are phenomenal, each story looks incredible with sumptuous costumes and exquisite costumes.

Brett remained incredible as Holmes from start to finish, Hardwicke continued to impress as Watson, I loved Burke, but always felt that Hardwicke was more in keeping with the character in the books.

The Problem of Thor Bridge and The Master Blackmailer are my personal favourites, but each has something to offer, The Last Vampyre perhaps being the weakest entry. Some terrific guest performances, Cheryl Campbell and Robert Hardy being two of note.

All in all, excellent. 8/10

Last night "The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes: The Creeping Man" aired on the Biography Channel. It started out scary but with a typical British flair for understatement. But it ended up amazingly! Charles Kay, a marvelous character actor if ever there was one, played a widower with a daughter engaged to his assistant. One morning she tells her father she has seen an intruder at her window. Her father gives her the "there-there" treatment, saying she was only dreaming because her bedroom is too high up for an intruder. But when the truth comes out, the story becomes a feat of sheer amazement, especially the end which I shall not spoil by giving it away here. All I can say is Charles Kay should have gotten the British equivalent of an Emmy for that performance. I think he even surpassed the (late) GREAT Jeremy Brett, whose Sherlock Holmes is so wonderful. Mr. Kay, if you can read this, I hope you know how much I enjoyed that scene last night and how much I've enjoyed all your works. And I wish with all my heart I could tell Jeremy Brett how marvelous I always thought he was, whether he was playing a toy soldier in 19th century Russia (Nicholas in "War & Peace,"), a martinet in "My Fair Lady" (even if he didn't really sing "On the Street Where You Live" to Audrey Hepburn) or as Sherlock Holmes. I used to think there was only one Sherlock Holmes - Mr. Basil Rathbone. Now I see there are 2. And I hope they're in heaven, talking to one another about Sherlock and talking with the "discoverer" (author) of Sherlock Holmes, namely, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Anyway, if you didn't see the episode last night, then wait until it comes back again or if you don't want to wait, then order the Casebook of Sherlock Holmes. This was a marvelous episode in a truly marvelous series.

Bendict Who? The consummate TV Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett) returns with his loyal friend Doctor John H. Watson (Edward Hardwicke) in another series of fighting the foes of civilization.

Unfortunately, the ravages of time and illness have taken their toll on Brett. He looks bad (accentuated by the incessant close-ups). Somewhere in the middle of "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" Brett began sounding like he had a permanent head-cold. That's gotten a lot worse.

The big take-away from this series is "The Boscombe Valley Mystery." It's almost like the glory days of the first two series. "The Disappearance of Lady Carfax" with guest stars Cheryl Campbell and Michael Jayston is acceptable, despite the changes to the story, the exreme downer ending, and the fact that Holmes spends the first part of the story playing with toys. "Shoscombe Old Place" sticks closely to the story but the Charles Augustus Milverton-based "The Master Blackmailer" is only good for a welcome appearance of Colin Jeavon's Lestrade, which is as iconic as Brett's Holmes. "The Last Vampire" marks a nadir not only for this series but the entire Brett/Holmes era. The other episodes, while not so dreadful as "Vampire," are unremarkable.

Jeremy Brett's reign as Sherlock Holmes was welcome from the start and Holmes/Watson fans rejoiced. But Brett's unfortunately failing physical and mental facilities (a sad story worthy of a TV movie of the week) unfortunately wrecked our hopes. By the final series, Charles Gray's Mycroft was picking up too much slack.

Too, the stories were given too much licence and produced weird anomalies.

"The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" with Brett still stands as the best Sherlock Holmes series I've ever seen and "The Return of Sherlock Holmes," despite the changed Watson, while only occasionally touching those initial Olympian heights, is quite good. By "The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes" the whole shebang was unraveling. What a shame.

The best few episodes still stand up as first-rate Holmes. The rest . . . Oh, the humanity!

The fascinating Granada series with the incredible Jeremy Brett as the master sleuth Sherlock Holmes continued well into the 1990's with episodes pertaining to the later life of the great detective. The stories, in read form, are quite fascinating and when brought to the screen, they were, as always carried over with care and panache.

Thank goodness for the wonderful folks at Granada Television. In the mid 1980s, they created the absolute best Sherlock Holmes ever to make it to the big or small screen. Unlike all the previous versions, which LIBERALLY deviated from the Conan Doyle stories, the Granada films tried to be perfect in every detail.

Unlike the caricature of Holmes that you see in previous films where he wears a deerstalker hat, smokes a curved pipe and spouts "elementary, my dear Watson", this Holmes is true to the original character. Additionally, Dr. Watson is not the bumbling idiot as portrayed by Nigel Bruce (Bruce should burn in Hell for how he ruined this character).

The first mini-series by Granada was exceptional and Jeremy Brett was the greatest Holmes ever. The second picked up exactly where it should have as did this third series.

Intelligently written and wonderful throughout. See these films and get hooked!!