This series generally started out
as Sherlock Holmes in 1964 with a
pilot being an adaptation of The Speckled
Band which was shown as part of the series called Detective. In it, we see Holmes played by Douglas Wilmer and Watson
played by Nigel Stock. It is a very respectable production which was brought
back as a full series in 1965 starting out with The Illustrious Client. The series was shot in black and white on
405 2” videotape like all other BBC productions of the day. The series was
afforded a great deal of location shooting with the series often having a dark
atmospheric feeling to it. I think being shot in black & white really
helped to move that along. The series has a very authentic feel to it.
Douglas Wilmer as Holmes is quite a
special treat. He can be short-tempered but really believable. I find his
adaptation of Holmes very genuine and some like him as he looks a lot like some
of the sketches made of the character back in Arthur Conan Doyle’s time. The
problem with the series is that Douglas Wilmer hated doing it. He hated the
scripts and in some cases they were re-written by himself and Nigel Stock. He
was dissatisfied with the amount of time he was given to rehearse for the
series which was knocked down to 10 days of rehearsal time per episode. When
the BBC came back to Wilmer to ask if he would like to do more Sherlock Holmes Wilmer
said no. Now, I am not sure about the
timeline to this. I am not sure that he was asked when they came back to do the
series in 1968 in colour or after he did the 1965 series. Regardless, it took
over two years for the series to return. When it did, it was completely
re-tooled. Everything about it changed from music to how it was produced. It
was no longer a series in black & white but now full colour. Everyone on
the production side changed. Only Nigel Stock returned as Watson but the
biggest change of all was Peter Cushing was now Sherlock Holmes.
In the 1960s Peter Cushing was a
big name. Of course, you could still argue that Peter Cushing’s status as an
actor is legendary. This year is the 100th anniversary of his birth.
There isn’t one thing I have seen him in that I didn’t like. One early gem I
saw him in before I realised he was in it was Laurel & Hardy’s A Chump at Oxford in 1940. Obviously I
have watched him in roles from Van Helsing to Victor Frankenstein. I loved him
in The Abominable Snowman and of
course Dr. Who in the two Dalek films. He even plays Sherlock Holmes in the
1959 Hammer film The Hound of the
Baskervilles. These seemed to be a casting coup to get such a name to do
television.
A
Study in Scarlet 16/09/68
In regards to this Sherlock Holmes
story, this is a pretty straight forward affair. The episode starts off with
two gentlemen, Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson who appear on the run. They stop
off at a hotel. What we get right away is the Drebber is enchanted with some
woman and he decides to go back and get her. This is much to the distress of Stangerson.
Drebber doesn’t listen to Stangerson and goes back for the girl. This takes him
back to Madame Charpentier’s Boarding House because he is infatuated with the
daughter of Madame Charpentier’s named Alice. Even though Alice does not look
like she is against the advances of Drebber too terribly much, Drebber is
eventually chased out of the boarding house by Alice’s brother Arthur. Drebber
barely escapes by cab but things only get worse for him. He is so drunk that he
really has no idea that the cab driver had taken him to some derelict building
that is completely vacant. There he is murdered.
We cut to 221B Baker Street where
we are introduced to the Peter Cushing incarnation of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is
very bored. There are no cases of merit for him and it appears that Watson is
agitating him a little bit, “Watson, I find it hard to eat my breakfast, read
my Times, and listen to outbursts.” Holmes and Watson are sent for by Inspector
Gregson and Inspector Lestrade to help investigate a murder. That has improved
Holmes mood greatly!When Holmes and Watson arrive they find that the body of Drebber sprawled out on ground with no blunt trauma to Drebber. On the wall written in blood is the word RACHE. Gregson assumes the murderer was going to write out Rachael. Holmes isn’t so sure. I enjoy the subtle competitiveness between Lestrade and Gregson. It is fun to watch. It’s by no means overboard but adds a little dimension to the story. The two only get more agitated as the story goes on and Holmes run circles around them.
As they find out who the murdered
person is, Gregson goes to Madame Charpentier’s Boarding House to find out what
they know about him. They find out that there were two men staying there,
Drebber and Stangerson. They were kicked out once Drebber started to put more
advances on Alice. Gregson then finds out about the return visit from Drebber
and the ensuing chase by Alice’s brother, Arthur. Gregson feel that there is
enough evidence to conclude that Arthur is lying about what happened. Gregson
believes that Arthur was successful in catching up to Drebber at the vacant
building and murdered him. Arthur has been arrested.
Holmes believes otherwise. A gold ring was found at the murder scene which is significant and Holmes knows that the murderer will want it back. Holmes puts an ad in a couple of newspapers saying that a ring has been found and can be retrieved at 221B Baker Street from Dr. Watson. An old lady comes to collect it. It is in fact one of the worse old lady disguises ever seen on BBC television but in some ways that is the charm. Holmes starts pursuing the old lady as she takes a cab. When the cab stops the old woman has disappeared. Holmes deduces that it is an actor who was playing the old woman because the acting was so believable.
Somehow in which I don’t quite
understand that Holmes and Watson tracked down Joey Daly, an actor who dressed
as the old woman who visited them the night before. He was bet the by the
murderer that he couldn’t dress as an old woman to fool anyone. To prove he
could, he was told to get the ring from the ad. Meanwhile, Stangerson is
murdered. Lestrade nearly catches the murderer in the act. Two pills are left
behind but Stangerson is stabbed with the word RACHE in blood on the wall above
him. Holmes believes otherwise. A gold ring was found at the murder scene which is significant and Holmes knows that the murderer will want it back. Holmes puts an ad in a couple of newspapers saying that a ring has been found and can be retrieved at 221B Baker Street from Dr. Watson. An old lady comes to collect it. It is in fact one of the worse old lady disguises ever seen on BBC television but in some ways that is the charm. Holmes starts pursuing the old lady as she takes a cab. When the cab stops the old woman has disappeared. Holmes deduces that it is an actor who was playing the old woman because the acting was so believable.
Holmes is also getting important news as he received a telegram that gives us the identity of the murderer. Holmes and Watson receive a visit from a beaten down Gregson and Lestrade as their case has fallen apart. Obviously Arthur was not the murderer. They once again need Holmes’ help. Once he finds out that the two officers have found pills in Stangerson’s room, Holmes immediately takes them and begins a series of tests.
We get a visit from the Baker
Street Irregulars lead by a boy named Wiggins; he was able to get a cab for
Holmes. This is a very important cab because the cabbie is the murderer and his
name is Jefferson Hope. Hope is arrested
and Holmes talks with him in Hope’s jail cell. Hope doesn’t want to stand
trial. He has a heart aneurism and he doesn’t have long to live anyway. Hope had been after Drebber and Stangerson
because they abducted his girl Lucy. The two were to be married after he
returned from a 3 month long job away from her. Drebber married Lucy against her will. Lucy
dies from a broken heart and Hope decides to hunt down Drebber and Stangerson. Because
Hope doesn’t have long to live, once he gets Drebber at the vacant house he
offers him one of two pills. One pill is safe and one pill is death. Whichever
one Drebber doesn’t take, Hope will. The wedding ring was used as something
Hope wanted Drebber to see before he dies. The pill Drebber takes is fatal.
Then he goes to Stangerson to offer him the same pills but instead of taking
the pill, Stangerson attacks Hope and as they struggle Stangerson falls on the
knife and dies. Hope wrote RACHE on the walls of where the murders took place
as a way for the police to think it was something different. RACHE is German
for revenge.
Unless I am really missing stuff
here, there seems to be an awful lot of information that we are not seeing in
this episode. There is a lot of things that happen that just happen with no
explanation on how we get there. How does Holmes and Watson track down Joey
Daly? Who is Holmes working with to discover the name of Jefferson Hope? How
does he get Wiggins to get Hope to Baker Street? Perhaps Holmes gave Wiggins a
really good description? To me, it’s kind of a messy production in that way. I
feel some details are glossed over a bit. On the book side, if Hope is so
hell-bent on revenge why does he even offer Drebber a chance at life? He has
been on Drebber’s tail for a year, it seems crazy that he would do all that to
leave it to fate. 
Nigel Stock is quite good as Watson. There
isn’t much difference between how he plays it in this and how he plays it with
Wilmer. I did think it was interesting that there are some moments that Watson
is doubtful of Holmes’ powers of deduction. That in itself interesting since this is the
first Holmes story but as this is clearly not the first time they have met in
this series plus clearly an established history has been made between them, it
seemed rather out of place. Watson seems to be more egotistical than I have
seen him before. Holmes starts to condemn himself for not noticing that old
lady was really a man and Watson tells him not to get too worked up over it as
after all, even he (Watson) was fooled by it.
The episode had a nice supporting cast.
Lestrade was played by William Lucas. I recognize him as range from the Doctor Who story Frontios. Gregson was played by George A. Cooper who is a favourite
character actor of mine. I have seen him in Steptoe and Son, Doctor Who
as Cherub in the The Smugglers as
well as a lot of other series of that vintage. I always enjoy him in any
program I see him. It was interesting to see Ed Bishop as Stangerson. Many will
recognize Ed Bishop as Commander Ed Straker from UFO. Overall I thought the acting was very strong. All the
performances were believable and this episode is from a period of BBC
television that excelled in this area.
The production itself is kind of a mixed
bag. It’s a traditional colour BBC multi-camera studio production. Interiors are
shot on videotape and exteriors are shot on film. It’s too bad that the series
didn’t continue to use the theme music created by Max Harris from Douglas
Wilmer series as it had a memorable theme to it. The Alan Fogg theme is nowhere
near as good. The incidental music fine and it is actually rather reminiscent
to some of Doctor Who stories from
the 1960s that I can’t think of at the moment. I felt that the lighting used
during night shots was exceptional. Very atmospheric but unfortunately it did
not match the shots within the same scene shot on video which kind of muddied
the effect.
I watched these from the R2 PAL DVD
released in 2004. This is not the BBC Learning release though I doubt there are
any differences between the two. There has been no restoration done to the
video at all. The video image is pretty noisy and there are some odd banding
issues on it too. A lot of times the light levels appear too low in some scenes
which are causing some odd banding issues. Clearly there has been no DVNR or
any PAL transform decoder applied to this release. It is interesting to see that now buying the title
from Amazon it is now an on-demand disc that will come to you as a DVD-R. I am
not against a MOD type program from the BBC but I was rather hoping it would be
for programs that have not already been released instead of programs that are
not going to get a proper re-pressing.
Of course as this series is 1960s BBC
television, there are episodes that are missing. Out of the 16 episodes made of
this series, only 6 episodes exist. The Douglas Wilmer series that is an
earlier production fares better as it is missing two episodes which each of the
missing episodes have footage that exists. Though, as with many series that
have missing episodes, rumours circulate about episodes of the Peter Cushing
series that exist in Germany. Does it? I doubt it but I wouldn’t mind being
wrong about that!
I enjoyed this episode but I am not a
great fan of Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes. I prefer the Douglas Wilmer
episodes. It appears that Peter Cushing himself wasn’t a great fan of his own performance
in this series. The rehearsal time was cut down and he had said, “Whenever I see some of those stories they
upset me terribly, because it wasn't Peter Cushing doing his best as Sherlock
Holmes - it was Peter Cushing looking relieved that he had remembered what to
say and said it!” That is too bad since Peter Cushing deserved better than
that. Douglas Wilmer had worked with Peter Cushing after Cushing had finished
working on Holmes and asked him about his time on the series. Wilmer says, “I
asked him how he had enjoyed doing the Holmes series. He replied tersely to the
effect that he would rather sweep Paddington Station for a living than go
through the experience again. He had my sympathies!”
All quotes from Douglas Wilmer were
sourced from an interview from Matthew Coniam with Douglas Wilmer published in
2009 from Movietone News. www.movietone-news.com.
Next week: the tradition for this blog is that every May I do a
theme month. That theme is always final episodes of a series. Next week I
re-examine the final episode of a favourite series of mine, All Creatures Great & Small as I
look at Brotherly Love. I wrote an
article on it in 2010 and I am going to look back at it and update. We will see
how that experiment goes.
Have a great week!
Do you have feedback, article requests or want to talk about a program but do not want to leave a public comment? Feel free to drop me an e-mail at FTA13867@gmail.com
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Do you have feedback, article requests or want to talk about a program but do not want to leave a public comment? Feel free to drop me an e-mail at FTA13867@gmail.com
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