Review by James Layton

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes ran on BBC during 1968. Originally, there were sixteen episodes but it was a common practice to record over the video tapes if a show did not perform well,. Sherlock Holmes was considered to have little future potential and most of the episodes were wiped so that the tapes could be reused. The six surviving episodes are included in this collection, with a few short clips of “lost” episodes that were recorded off of Scandinavian broadcasts. A viewer can even see the subtitles in the brief footage in the special features. Luckily, the surviving episodes are some of Doyle’s most famous Holmes stories. However, the first episode of the series did display a little tape damage in a few spots. I was caught off guard as those old tape lines suddenly erupted across the screen. Outside of that example, the other full episodes looked well preserved. The Hound of the Baskervilles is an excellent two-parter that could have been a standalone film. Other classics such as The Sign of Four are also covered. Most episodes clock in at around an hour which is a good length for the content. Some of the stories are slow paced and stretching them longer than an hour would make the episodes feel tedious.

The technical aspects of the show are fine but dated. The show definitely feels like TV and not film. The actors’ costumes and the sets are put together well but the film quality and lighting make it look like a soap opera. The score is mostly unnoticeable but occasionally became distracting. An example is a segment where Holmes and Watson were using a dog to track an escaping suspect. The editing is fast and exciting but the soundtrack belongs in a wacky comedy.

Speaking of Holmes and Watson, Peter Cushing is an excellent Holmes as far as portraying the intellectual side but fails to be convincing as the “man of action” Holmes. There is a scene where he meets someone that he defeated in a boxing match and it is very hard to accept the story as the man is much taller and broader than Cushing. Nigel Stock is a good Watson and even gets a few moments to shine as the former soldier turned doctor described in the books. That is another point for which I would like to give this series props. The stories are very faithfully recreated from the source material. I even recognized some verbatim dialogue from the books.

While it doesn’t capture all of the aspects of Holmes (the love of disguises, the boxing, etc.), it tells the stories in the best way it can given the cast and the budget. I have to say that the care that went into adapting the original works into a regular TV show was impressive and the tragedy is that so few episodes of this series survived.