Product: Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, The {The Master Blackmailer (#1.7)} [VHS] (1993)
Rating: 1.0
A Travesty
One of the finest Sherlock Holmes short stories, "Charles Augustus Milverton" showcases Holmes and Watson at their very best: brave, dashing, and humorous. This Granada adaptation manages to throw out every feature that makes the story great, padding it out with unconvincing background detail and, in one particularly dreadful episode, suggesting that Holmes has actually fallen in love. Designed to give Jeremy Brett an actor's holiday, this little scene is an index to everything that went wrong with this series in its later years -- sentimental, unnecessary, and ludicrously untrue to Conan Doyle.