Sherlock

That is quite good, I remember watching the Rupert Everett one at the time. Seem to remember a BBC adaptation of Baskervilles sometime in the early Noughties with Richard E Grant and Richard Roxburgh as Holmes and Watson.

That woman says about how it's the Holmes you grew up with being the favourite but I don't know. I remember as a kid seeing a movie with Peter Cushing for Hound of the Baskervilles and I think it was Study in Terror (being traumatised as a six year old of the beginning where the barmaid/prostitute gets stabbed to death by Jack the Ripper) with John Neville.

Like Bond I tend to look at who captures as closesly as possible, the literary Holmes. To me it's Brett. He seemed to suck the character from the pages. The first time I properly saw him in action was when I did the Speckled Band as part of English Lit' at school. My dad (a serious Holmes enthusiast who met Brett & Hardwicke at Hamleys once) showed me the episode and it was like 'watching the book' as it were.

On a tangent, but during the Empty Hearse where Freeman's Watson starts attacking the patient who he thinks is Sherlock disguised I thought the patient looked just like how Brett's Holmes looked in his disguise in The Empty House.




"Watson! The needle!"

Blunt Instrument wrote:

That is quite good, I remember watching the Rupert Everett one at the time. Seem to remember a BBC adaptation of Baskervilles sometime in the early Noughties with Richard E Grant and Richard Roxburgh as Holmes and Watson.

The Roxborough Holmes (Grant plays Stapleton) is a bit of an oddity, its not bad but never really captures either the spirit of Holmes or the atmosphere of the moors imo.

Hilly KCMG wrote:

That woman says about how it's the Holmes you grew up with being the favourite but I don't know. I remember as a kid seeing a movie with Peter Cushing for Hound of the Baskervilles and I think it was Study in Terror (being traumatised as a six year old of the beginning where the barmaid/prostitute gets stabbed to death by Jack the Ripper) with John Neville.

Like Bond I tend to look at who captures as closesly as possible, the literary Holmes. To me it's Brett. He seemed to suck the character from the pages.

Agreed this response is often applied to long lived characters (Holmes, Bond, The Doctor, even the likes of Batman...) but I think is only valid for a small percentage of the population, while it is true that once a performance effectively defines your idea of that character subsequent actors have a bit of a hill to climb...but for the majority of us the desire to be entertained does cut a lot of slack and attitudes do change. I grew up with Cushing as the ideal Holmes, loved Rathbone who was probably the first I was aware of via tv showings of his films, but Cushing was the man i put in my head when reading the stories....then Brett came along and moved to the front, it is simply effortless to place him in the mind when reading the stories.

Heard it said that the scene in The Empty Hearse in the restaurant where Holmes reintroduces himself to Watson via disguising himself as a waiter with a little drawn-on moustache and a French/Belgian accent might possibly have been a 'tip of the hat' to that other great detective ... Monsieur Hercule Poirot.

Christopher Plummer was my favourite Holmes. I didn't like Jeremy Brett at all. It felt like it was all about copying Paget's illustrations rather than making a crime story. Plus I couldn't stand Brett's scenery chewing performances. Put me right off the whole thing.

What I love about the BBC's Sherlock is that it has returned the emphasis to the story rather than some kind of rose tinted nostalgic victoriana pastiche. Very clever. I consider Moffatt and Gatiss devious geniuses of the highest order :)