Product: Sherlock Holmes
Rating: 1.0
The fake detective. But THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!
This series was produced by Sheldon Reynolds and filmed in France apparently for an American TV audience of 1954-1955. "Holmes" is portrayed by Ronald Howard (son of Leslie Howard), completely out of character from the more classical renditions, decidedly not intellectually convincing. Howard Marion Crawford portrays Watson who, in one of the few negative pluses in this series, is not the boob depicted by Nigel Bruce and drives most of these episodes. Lestrade is somewhat credibly portrayed by Archie Duncan.The complete Sherlock Holmes repertoire has almost 60 episodes, 38 or so filmed with Jeremy Brett, still leaving a substantial number unfilmed. Don't look to this series to fill any gaps. This reviewer has nothing against faked (not Doyle-created) Sherlock Holmes plots if the story is good. In this case, there are 20 episodes (of an original 39 in this series) which the cover blurb assures us are "loyal to the great Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories." Well, if you think these are Doyle-created or inspired or "loyal" episodes, on even a remotely intellectual par with the original works or some of the TV adaptations of the last 20 or so years, there's a bridge here this reviewer would like to sell you. Only one of these, "Red-headed League" is Doyle's, the basic plot intact except for deficiencies discussed below. The other 19 are stereotyped caricatures having no relationship whatever to any of Doyle's original stories.What comes to mind as one watches these episodes is crude burlesque. There is no regard for real mystery or quality content. Everything is mock thrills and cheap "entertainment." The "acting" is one-dimensional and grotesquely over-done (and one step removed from evil villains twirling their mustaches and going "heh-heh"). Typically, in "Eiffel Tower" precious minutes disappear showing can-can girls dancing and to hell with "plot" or explanations. After all, THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! One stinker, "Texas Cowgirl", comes complete with stereotyped "cowgirl;" and insultingly "inscrutable Injun chief" complete with feather bonnet and war paint, squatting in front of a teepee in a hotel room, not "savvying" English, smoking peace pipe and saying "HOW".Just as one begins to feel one of these charades is maybe of better quality than the rest, Reynolds & Co. uncork a buffoonish ending with the characters hamming it up foolishly with lots of heartwarming feel-good corn, playing to a dumbed-down audience with limited attention-span. But you know what American commercial TV does to just about anything and there's no exception here: a classic example of what still drives such television even today.By today's standards, the DVD picture and sound are crude. There are occasional lapses, likely by chance, into sporadic good footage from the morass of bad material. Overall these 50-year-old materials show no evidence of re-mastering or cleanup. The black and white image can be very dark in low light scenes when definition is almost totally lost! There are frequent speckles, splotches, jumps, light-level fluctuations, flickers, some hairs or fibers on the lens, something briefly hanging down in front of the camera at one point, and the like. Sound quavers and varies in loudness. The only saving grace (some might say that's no plus) is volume of material for the price (20 episodes at 25 minutes per for a total of 500 minutes). Arthur Conan Doyle certainly had nothing to do with this.