Posted: 09/21/2004

The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes

(1990)

by Parama Chaudhury

Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke return with more adventures from the journals of the world’s greatest detective. “Watson, the game’s afoot!”

Most people would agree that Jeremy Brett was one of the greatest actors, if not the greatest, to ever play Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately, as age and ill health caught up with him, Brett seemed to lose some of that elasticity, that agility, that made him such a delight to watch in the Granada TV rendition of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s well-beloved series. His portrayal of Holmes also becomes more of a caricature than a three-dimensional interpretation. The Casebook, though not the last collection filmed by Brett, was put together a mere five years before the actor died, and you can already see that shadow of illness descending upon his once sharp looks.

What saves this set of episodes, released by MPI Home Videos in DVD form, is that the character, Holmes, has also aged, and so we are willing to believe that someone of his stature will become a little full of himself, a little bit of a exaggeration of his young, astonishingly brilliant self. Holmes, like Brett, broods more, and it is clear that he is heading towards a finale—indeed, this was the last set of Holmes stories written by Doyle, and was published posthumously. For this reason, this collection will still delight anyone who is a fan of Brett, or of the master detective himself, even though it lacks the spark of the earlier films.

The stories themselves are a curious collection. They range from a touch of sci-fi (an animal extract that jumpstarts virility) to a case in which there is no crime, so to speak. None of the stories are particularly engrossing, but as always, Brett and Edward Hardwicke (as Dr. Watson, Holmes’s faithful friend and scribe) make them come alive to us. Those familiar with the series will see many common faces, particularly among the female stars, and some not so common ones, including a very young Jude Law in a small role in Shoscombe Old Place. The Illustrious Client is one of the most well-acted episodes, and while justice is wrought in a most extra-judicial way, the story is also one of the more interesting ones. While The Boscombe Valley Mystery is quite a commonplace story of old grudges and new love, the storyline is strong and compact enough to make it an enjoyable experience nevertheless. In The Creeping Man, we are confronted with an almost supernatural set of occurrences, and a brush with sci-fi, which unlike in other Holmes stories, is not completely explained away by rational causes. The weakest episode is probably The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax, with its stock characters and predictable story line. Even then, little touches like the shots of the lake where Lady Carfax takes her walks make the episode a visually appealing one.

MPI’s DVD collection contains plenty of extras that will prove a bonus for die-hard fans of Holmes and the man who played him so well. They include interviews with Brett (who apparently had a disastrous first screen test as Holmes) and Hardwicke, and commentary from director John Madden (The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax, and more famously, Shakespeare in Love and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin). Production notes, and a short on the Sherlock Museum round out the fun for loyalists.

The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes DVD Collection will be available September 28, 2004.

If you are a fan of Holmes and Watson, or simply love a good mystery, you will be hard-pressed to find better examples anywhere. These quality short films are available on DVD from MPIhomevideo.com.

Parama Chaudhury is a writer and educator living in New England.

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