rdigby

Christopher Plummer plays Sherlock Holmes investigating London's Whitechapel murders of 1888. The script, by British TV writer John Hopkins, is based on a discredited theory that the murderer, "Jack the Ripper", was covering up a Royal bastardy scandal. The period setting is excellent, but the gory violence of the murders is fortunately excluded. Plummer's Holmes lacks the intellectual arrogance of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original: he is a vulnerable, sympathetic individual, which allows Plummer to play the best scene of the film against Genevieve Bujold as the pathetic Annie Crook. It may be Bujold's best screen performance. Watch this, not for thrills or the theory, but for the playing.

Insomniacs apart, the only viewers likely to be attracted to this curiosity are fans of Marianne Faithfull. If they hope to find a forgotten gem of her career, this will disappoint them. A weak story about the haunting of an English mansion is compromised from the start because the location, which was in India, looks nothing like an English mansion. A feeble script and direction leave even such reliable hands as Penelope Keith and Anthony Bate uncertain of how to play. Followers of Marianne Faithfull will find her in ill fitting costumes and photographed from unflattering angles. The overall effect is amateur.