DVD
The BBC Sherlock Holmes Collection

Starring: Peter Cushing, Richard Roxburgh, Rupert Everett and Douglas Henshall
BBC DVD
RRP: £39.99
BBCDVD1954
Certificate: 15
Available 05 June 2006


This six-disc box set contains all the BBC's previously released Sherlock Holmes DVD material - including two versions of The Hound of the Baskervilles and 2004's The Case of the Silk Stocking - as well as the 2005 fact-based drama The Strange Case Of Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle, which is new to DVD.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are called upon to investigate a mystery that threatens the life of a Dartmoor Baronet. His predecessor, Sir Charles Baskerville, has apparently been slain by a savage, spectral hound that is believed to have haunted the Baskerville family for generations...

The Hound of the Baskervilles was part of a 16-episode Sherlock Holmes television series that was made between 1968 and 1969 and which followed on from a run of 13 black-and-white episodes recorded during 1964 and 1965 starring Douglas Wilmer. But it was the appointment of Peter Cushing to the role that made its mark with mass audiences (on its original run the production attracted viewing figures of more than 15 million).

Cushing's willowy frame and well-spoken panache were made for the role of Holmes. It's just a pity that he couldn't have been cast as a regular far earlier in his career. In Hammer's 1959 film version of Hound he was just the right age, whereas by the time of this series he was looking rather old and grey.

This was one of the very first BBC series to be made in colour, though you'd never realise it from the overall picture quality, which is generally excellent. The episodes clearly had a lot of money spent on them - if you didn't know better, their production values might lead you to believe they were made in the late 1970s rather than the '60s. The episodes do occasionally show their limitations when sets or cameras wobble, but then many a classic show, including Doctor Who and Fawlty Towers, have been prone to such forgivable failings.

This two-part adaptation was also the first dramatisation of Hound of the Baskervilles to be shot at the actual location of the novel and ranks among the most faithful adaptations (certainly more so than the 2002 Richard Roxburgh version, which is also included in the box set but was not available for review). Aided by strong central performances from Cushing and Nigel Stock (who had previously accompanied Douglas Wilmer's Holmes in the earlier series) as Dr Watson, the production boasts a solid script by Hugh Leonard and all the strengths of the BBC's much admired costume dramas of the period.

For Holmes fans this is therefore unmissable and for casual viewers it'll also be a treat.


An American is found dead with the word RACHE - German for "revenge" - written in blood above the body. Holmes' investigation takes him from the dangerous London streets to the atmospheric world of the music hall...

From Baskerville Hall to the music hall. Unlike Hound, A Study in Scarlet, the very first Sherlock Holmes story, is here adapted into a single 50-minute episode, despite being based on a novel rather than a short story. Dramatist Hugh Leonard has pared down the plot accordingly, omitting the initial introduction of Watson to Holmes (since, of course, the audience already knew the two characters well by this point).

It is notable how some 1960s attitudes have crept into the adaptation. Rather than being a helpless victim of the advances of Enoch Drebber (Craig Hunter), Alice Charpentier (Edina Ronay) appears to put up only a token (i.e. not entirely sincere) resistance.

Worthy of study.


A young man is found over the body of his father, an odious bully who has been brutally beaten to death. Holmes is called in to ensure that an innocent man is not hanged for the crime...

Each of these episodes boasts a stellar cast, including plenty of faces that will be familiar to sci-fi fans. A Study in Scarlet stars Gerry Anderson stalwart Ed Bishop as Joseph Stangerson, while The Boscombe Valley Mystery features Space 1999's Nick Tate as James McCarthy. Doctor Who fans might also recognise Jack Woolgar, who played Staff Sergeant Arnold in The Web of Fear, as Moran.

Nigel Stock provides good support as Dr Watson, though he is prone to some of the bumbling tendencies that Nigel Bruce brought to the role in the 1940s movies, particularly during this episode. Not until the 1980s would David Burke finally rid the character from such associations. However, Watson comes across much better in the next episode...


In one of his most exotic adventures, Holmes encounters lost treasure, a murderous pygmy, a mysterious set of twins and a beautiful but wronged woman with whom Watson falls in love...

As with A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four has been compacted from a full-length novel to a 50-minute episode. As a result, Michael and Mollie Hardwick's dramatisation flies past at a rate of knots, though some elements, including the contribution made by Toby the dog (Toddy), have been pared down to almost nothing in the process.

There are all manner of strange characters in this intriguing tale, including the eccentric twins Thaddeus and Bartholomew Sholto (Paul Daneman), the one-legged Jonathan Small (Howard Goorney), and the murderous pygmy Tonga (Zena Keller). It's also quite remarkable how much tea Mary Morstan (Ann Bell) manages to guzzle throughout this episode!

Special mention must be made of Nigel Stock, whose performance as the infatuated Watson is really quite touching.


Holmes declines an assignment to locate a missing gem, yet the jewel crosses his path thanks to what he describes as "one of those whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have four million human beings all jostling each other within the space of a few square miles..."

Originally broadcast on December 23, 1968 and with a yuletide setting, there's a distinctly festive feel to The Blue Carbuncle, which is, in my opinion, the best of the surviving Cushing episodes. Humorous touches include some nicely played sight gags involving Holmes and Watson, and larger-than-life characters such as the pompous Lady Morcar (Madge Ryan) and the hot-tempered stallholder Breckinridge (Michael Robbins). Adding to the celebratory mood are passing references to two of Holmes's greatest cases, A Scandal in Bohemia and The Hound of the Baskervilles.

And just in case anyone thought that Cushing was too softly spoken to play Holmes, check out his angry outburst towards the end of this story.

The only things that let this episode down slightly are a few vinyl scratches on the stock music that opens the show and a rather stilted performance by two times Doctor Who Time Lord Clyde Pollitt as the Police Sergeant.

Sadly the other ten episodes that Cushing made are currently missing from the BBC archives, but the six that survive stand as a testament to an excellent series.


The year is 1902, and an ominous fog has descended upon the streets of London. When the body of a young girl is dragged from the Thames, she is initially assumed to be a prostitute. However, the discovery of a silk stocking wedged in her throat suggests otherwise. Sherlock Holmes soon realises that she is in fact an aristocratic lady...

Written by Allan Cubitt, who penned the BBC's rather unnecessary 2002 adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Case of the Silk Stocking could scarcely be more different. Whereas Hound has been filmed to death, Silk Stocking is a completely original story.

Cubitt makes innovative use of the established characters. The depiction of the detective's cocaine use is hardly revelatory, but here the writer and the director (Simon Cellan Jones) suggest that the drug helps Holmes (Rupert Everett) to see into the mind of the killer, who has a very different kind of addiction. Though the tradition of portraying Watson on screen as a bumbling buffoon is happily far behind us, thanks largely to the Jeremy Brett/David Burke series, Cubitt and actor Ian Hart manage to take the character further, by having him conduct parts of the investigation - very successfully - on his own.

The feature-length story takes place during Edwardian times, towards the latter end of the Conan Doyle canon, as opposed to the more usual 19th-century setting. This allows for more modern - yet still authentic - elements to come into play. Thus we see Holmes using a telephone and the police analysing fingerprints.

Watson has left 221b by this point, and is soon to be married to Mrs Vandeleur (Helen McCrory), a liberated American divorcée whose expertise in psychoanalysis proves to be an inspiration to Holmes. Though the character may seem rather ahead of her time, the fact that she in an American mitigates this to an extent. And, while such unsavoury subjects as foot fetishes and borderline paedophilia never "graced" the works of Conan Doyle, they are covered in Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, a real book that Mrs Vandeleur recommends to Holmes.

The performances are uniformly good, led by a suitably pallid and languid (though slightly too young-looking) Rupert Everett. The music, by Adrian Johnston, is excellent and the production values high. Only a very unconvincing disguise donned by Holmes undermines the story to any serious degree.

Unlike the Cushing episodes, this disc includes a special feature. It's only an audio commentary - provided by the director and the producer, Elinor Day - but no more than that should be expected in a box set with such a bargain price. Jones and Day reveal how they achieved the effect of Holmes pulling a long silk stocking from a murder victim's throat. The producer has a rather annoying habit of saying how lucky she thought they were: there are several instances of "We were lucky to get this actor" and "We were fortunate with this location", etc.

Whether by luck or, more likely, by judgement, this is a very enjoyable production.


Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Everybody knows the name. Everybody knows Sherlock Holmes - or thinks they do. However, few know the true story of Conan Doyle's remarkable life, and fewer still the extent to which Doyle suppressed and sanitised the pain of Holmes' birth, or what drove him to murder his famous detective...

Set between 1892 and the early 1900s, the feature-length drama The Strange Case Of Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle starts off like Picard's dream-like experience in the Nexus in Star Trek: Generations, with a 33-year-old Doyle (convincingly played by Douglas Henshall) enjoying a Victorian family Christmas. However, things soon take a turn for the worse, when Doyle's wife Louise (Saskia Reeves) contracts tuberculosis, and then his father tragically dies in an insane asylum. These events drive Doyle to kill off Sherlock Holmes, much to the surprise and disapproval of the great detective's many fans.

This is a speculative piece rather than a pure biographical drama. Writer David Pirie fills in some of the gaps between real-life events to explore theories and questions such as: Was Doyle, like his father, afflicted by mental illness? What inspired the often gruesome and scandalous cases that Holmes was called upon to solve?

It's an intriguing work, though we never truly get into the head of the troubled writer. Instead, we see a sequence of events that might be hard for less initiated viewers to follow and/or sympathise with. For instance, Doyle laments his wife's illness, the early stages of which he, as a doctor, failed to notice; yet within minutes of screen time he has embarked upon an affair (albeit a platonic one) with Jean Leckie (Emily Blunt).

The drama is at its most compelling when it goes into "detective mode", when the characters of Doyle's mentor Dr Joseph Bell (Brian Cox) and biographer Selden (Tim McInnerny) begin to piece together evidence Holmes-style. David Pirie previously wrote about Bell and Doyle in Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes. Both Cox and McInnerny are captivating as their respective Holmes substitutes (though rather chunkier than traditional depictions of the character).

This disc contains no special features, which is a pity, because an audio or text commentary would have been useful for filling in biographical details and explaining what the writer used as evidence. Nevertheless, this is an interesting companion piece to the Holmes dramas.


All in all, this box set makes a very interesting case.

Of course, the BBC has produced more television Sherlock Holmes than this, including the highly regarded Douglas Wilmer series, though none of those episodes have yet made it on to DVD. Let's hope the Beeb releases them before too long. At the risk of sounding like Fred Flintstone, let's all cry out for Wilmer!

Richard McGinlay

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