Posted on 05/20/2012 10:38:44 AM PDT by djone
Season Finale? Already? How many does that make? 3? 4? Bohemia, Baskervilles, ...am I missing one?
I did not even know a new series of Holmes was on. I can’t get PBS at my current location, tho I think I receive 14 channels over the air.
The stories with Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke was probably the best Sherlock Holmes series.
The best actors were Nigel Bruce and Basil Rathbone tho the scripts were not up to the actors ability. I just saw one in which Nigel Bruce sings “Loch Lomond” with a girl who is supposed to be a professional singer. Sherlock tells Dr. Watson that his singing is good enough for Albert Hall and as a matter of fact he did about as good a version as I have ever heard.
I have finally begun watching these (and caught up on season one). I didn’t like the idea of anyone “updating” Sherlock Holmes (and couldn’t see how anyone could compete with Jeremy Brett’s portrayal), but these shows are very good. Unique. I am looking forward to tonight’s season finale. Yes, there were only 3 episodes (again). That’s what I hate about British TV “seasons”.
“Sherlock” is three shows per “season”. BBC’s idea of “seasons” and “miniseries” is a bit different from ours. . . to the Brits, 13 episodes is a “season”. . .
It's also what I like about British TV seasons. They go on long enough to tell the story, without spinning out an endless soap opera. If TV series were books, the British “books” would vary in size from novellas through to trilogies. North American “books” (I include Canada here) would all be trilogies — with two books worth of soap opera for every book of substantive plot development.
That said, I also agree with you. When you get a good program, the season's over just when you've whetted your appetite for more. (Bearing in mind only the good programs make it to this side of the pond.)
See if PBS isn’t streaming this new epiode on their website tonight. If you like the old black and white films of Mr. Holmes copy this link and go down to a site that you can watch on line, with stars like Raymond Massey and Arthur Wontner. .. http://sagaciousiconoclast.blogspot.com/2010/09/sherlock-holmes.html
Thanks but where I live the only internet is dial-up unless you want to pay a high price for satellite.
When all the stations went to digital, I just kept using my old outside antenna and it seemed to work fine. The only station I lost was the local PBS which I normally don’t watch except for those odd shows which actually are extraordinary.
PBS has past shows available at: http://video.pbs.org/
you could get a digital antenna, it might pick up more channels (and better video quality)
you could also try to dnload tv shows via a torrent (i use http://www.utorrent.com/ ).
my favorite site for tv shows is: http://eztv.it/
there is also an entry for sherlock: http://eztv.it/shows/376/sherlock/
and a rather long list of series: http://eztv.it/showlist/
“I did not even know a new series of Holmes was on”
Me neither.
I love Rathbone, but I don’t think anyone will ever top Jeremy Brett in that part.
I did like Jude Law as Watson in the Robert Downey movie(s). I only saw the first one.
Jeremy Brett was excellent and Edward Hardwicke was just as good. I think what really set their series apart was how closely they followed the original stories.
For some reason everyone wants to rewrite Conan-Doyle which makes about as much sense as rewriting Shakespeare.
I would love to have seen Rathbone and Bruce doing the same exact roles and stories and direction etc. Unfortunately most of the Rathbone series were sort of like the Quota Quickies which were common in Britain at the time.
Too hard to explain, but if you know the stories and have seen the adaptation, you'll get it.
I love the Jeremy Brett, but the problem, when you’ve found the ultimate interpretator, is that everyone else falls flat.
Joan Hickson is Miss Marple, and all the new ladies just don’t have it.
What they’ve done with “Sherlock” is brought it into modern day with new technology - what would Sherlock Holmes have done in the days of iphones and computers? It’s actually quite good - although a little disorienting. It is a quality production.
I’ve been downloading these from iTunes. The HD version is expensive, but worth it if you are going to watch on a big screen. I’ve seen enough of this episode to know the ending will be hard to watch.
I agree about Brett but this series is different and quirky enought that it workes and is quite well done by both the actors and writers.
I completely agree with what you say.
I have also thought about how great it would have been for Rathbone to have been in that TV series, because you are correct, they stayed so close to the stories and got the details right.
That’s what makes them so enjoyable, you are really entering another world.
This reminds of my greatest casting regret of all time. I am so sad that Victor Buono never lived to play Nero Wolfe.
I only know him as King Tut in Batman, but he always seemed SO SMART to me.
I think he was already gone by the time I read the Wolfe stories, but it was one of the first things I thought. “Buono should play him!”
And I can claim a little credibility here, since when I first read “The Leopard” by Lampedusa I thought “this is crazy, but Burt Lancaster would be perfect in this part!” and lo and behold I find out he did play the part, and very, very well.
The Leopard is one of the very few books I’ve read more than once, The Sherlock Holmes stories I’ve read the most; many, many times since I was about 10 years old.
They really are my favorites, by lengths and lengths.
“this series is different and quirky enought that it workes”
I’ll really have to check it out, hopefully they’ll have summer re-runs.
It’s getting very hard to keep up with TV, there is a lot of good stuff out there.
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