This is an enjoyable and thoroughly acceptable adaptation of Conan Doyle's tale and plays thing pretty straight and accurate, although Martin Shaw's American accent as Sir Henry Baskerville certainly leaves a lot to be desired ! Still, there's always Glynis Barber to enjoy !

Ian Richardson Is Sherlock Holmes in his most famous case
Review date: 2004-11-15 Rating: 8 out of 10

When this story was first shown in 1983, the BBC had made a production starring Tom Baker as Sherlock Holmes in the same adventure, only a year previously. Thankfully this is a vast improvement on the BBC adaptation, with Ian Richardson proving to be an excellent choice in the role. As with actors such as Christopher Plummer and Peter Cushing, Richardson plays the role in a fairly straight fashion, preferring not to emphasise the more eccentric aspects of the character as Jeremy Brett would ultimately do when his vision of the character emerged in the Granada adaptations a few months later. Like Plummer in Murder By Decree, this Holmes is an expert at adopting disguises to fool people, and Richardson clearly enjoys this aspect of the character. He also seems to relish the scenes in which the character shows Watson up.

The late Donald Churchill is largely unmemorable in his role as Doctor Watson, drawing his inspiration from the kind of bumbling image of Watson adopted by Nigel Bruce in his films with Basil Rathbone in the 1940's. This is a shame as actors such as James Mason and later David Burke and Edward Hardwicke showed that Watson could be played as an intelligent man. Besides would he have ever made a Doctor if he had not been.

With regard to the supporting cast, Martin Shaw fresh from the success of The Professionals, is cast against type as the American Sir Henry Baskerville. Although the actor was clearly keen to move away from the image of Ray Doyle, he never looks entirely suited to the role, and one cannot help feeling that an American actor would have been far more suitable. In contrast to Shaw, Brian Blessed is suitably cast as the loud and aggressive Lyons. Other actors such as Denholm Elliott and Connie Booth also play their parts well.

During production of this adapption, it was disclosed that Granada TV had also secured the rights to produce Sherlock Holmes. This result in legal action, with Weintraub arguing that Conan Doyles estate had never disclosed this to him. In the end an out of Court settlement was reached, and no more adventures were produced by Weintraub. So whilst we were given an opportunity to see how good a Holmes Richardson made, we were also left with a glimpse of what might have been.

Not a bad effort
Review date: 2003-11-12 Rating: 6 out of 10

First of all I have to say that Ian Richardson makes an excellent Sherlock Holmes. After that things start to fall apart with this adaptation of the Baskerville story.

This version does not take as many liberties as the most recent BBC version but it does change some aspects of the story. The principal villain, Stapleton, actually kills a character directly, as well via the hound, which never happened in the book.

There are also some probelms with the casting. The casting of Martin Shaw (with his terrible American accent) as Sir Henry Baskerville was a major mistake. Also a mistake was the actor chosen to portray Watson. This actor (who's name I forget) plays more of a bumbling Watson which was something I hoped had begun and ended with Nigel Bruce's portrayal in the Rathbone era. It is clearly apparent in the books that Watson is very intelligent (he would have to be in order to be a doctor) but once again he is almost turned into the comic relief.

As stated earlier, this is not a bad adaptation which is better than the BBC's recent effort but to my mind the definitive version of this story is that featuring Jeremy Brett.

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