A. Conan Doyle’s The Sign of the Four (aka, The Sign of Four (1890) was the second novel in the Sherlock Holmes canon. This 1987 adaptation starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes and Edward Hardwicke as Watson is considered by many as the best movie version of a Sherlock Holmes story. Of course, the story has a bit of everything: a hidden treasure, murders, sinister forces, a locked room, and an exciting chase. The movie version leaves out the romance of Dr. Watson and Mary Morstan (Jenny Seagrove in this production) and Sherlock shooting up with a 7% solution of cocaine. Do you have a favorite movie version of a Sherlock Holmes story? GRADE: A
Half of the Razzle Bathrobe films! My favorite among those is probably The Hound of the Baskervilles!
Bob, I’m a big fan of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES!
They were definitely a great Holmes & Watson team. I haven’t seen it since it was first out, but they did a good job with it.
Anything other than the awful Robert Downey HOLMES movies is better.
Jeff, you are so right about the Robert Downey HOLMES movies! Dreadful!
To me, Jeremy Brett is the ultimate Holmes and I love almost all of the adaptations he starred in. I really like “The Red-Headed League” and “The Musgrave Ritual”, but I think most of them are good.
Deb, I have more of these classic Jeremy Brett episodes on DVD. Like you, I think Jeremy Brett comes closest to the Sherlock Holmes presented in the classic stories. THE SIGN OF FOUR might be my favorite of Brett’s series.
I liked the Downey Films, but I think maybe I’m less knowledgeable about the canon, so diversions from it don’t bother me as much. I also like the newest show, with B. Cumberbatch and M. Freeman.
I’m not sure which of the Brett’s I’ve seen.
Will 7 days be enough for you to cover all the shows/movies, and will you include pastiches?
Maggie, I’ll be including pastiches. I watched the Brett’s on PBS back in the 1980s. Love Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, too! I may have another “Sherlock” week later this year.
Never seen any of the Bretts. Don’t like the Basil Rathbone ones because they make Watson out to be an idiot.
Steve, the Bretts are great! And Watson is treated with respect in those episodes, too!
The Brett are THE best adaptations done, but even they fall short with the novels, due to time restrictions. They are best with the stories. I have them all on DVD. I enjoy the old Rathbone movies, but they are non-canonical and Watson is played with such British understatement that he comes off as stupid, which of course he is not. Still, the best way to experience Holmes is on the written page.
Rick, I totally agree with you on your “Holmes on the page” stance. But, of the hundreds of Sherlock Holmes movies and TV episodes, Jeremy Brett’s series stands above the rest.
On Conan Doyle I just found this by accident (yes, I browse all kind of pages in the web …):
http://publicdomainreview.org/2013/06/12/sir-arthur-and-the-fairies/
The great man’s claim that fairies –real fairies – had been photographed in the north of England by two young girls was greeted with wonder, but unfortunately for Conan Doyle, most of it was of the “what can he be thinking?” variety.
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If the photos were real, Conan Doyle wrote in The Coming of the Fairies, a book that included both Strand articles, they would provide the first solid evidence that whole new orders of invisible beings existed in our world.
A funny story – two teenage girls bluffing the famous author with paper cutouts …
Wolf, this story about Doyle just shows, you can fool some of the people some of the time.
This incident was made into a movie called Fairy Tale: A True Story with Peter O’Toole as Doyle.