It’s rare that YouTube’s algorithm surfaces much of interest. But for whatever reason, it recently offered a clip from “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” the British series from Granada Television that ran from 1984 to 1994 (airing on PBS in the U.S.), adapting Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective stories with as much fidelity to their Victorian setting as possible.
That was enough to send me hunting for the full series. Turns out, episodes can be streamed free on several platforms (I watched on Tubi) and it’s striking to see how our ideas about Sherlock’s on-screen incarnation have changed over the years.
Developed for television by John Hawkesworth (who also had a hand in creating “Upstairs, Downstairs”), “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” stars Jeremy Brett in the title role. Dr. Watson is played by David Burke originally, later replaced by Edward Hardwicke. Both versions of Watson are good. Nearly indistinguishable, in fact. Lightly amused and appalled by Sherlock in equal measure (and appropriately mustachioed).
But it’s Brett’s show. And like Basil Rathbone before him, he closely resembles the character — the dark hair slicked back, the aquiline nose, the lanky physique — as drawn in Sidney Paget’s illustrations that accompanied Doyle’s stories when they first ran in The Strand magazine.
Apparently, Brett’s father was so aghast at his chosen profession that he insisted his son take a stage name (Brett) rather than besmirch family name of Huggins. Early in his career, he played Eliza’s suitor Freddy Eynsford-Hill in 1964’s “My Fair Lady.” Despite having a decent singing voice, Warner Bros. chose to dub him instead.
Brett’s speaking voice, on the other hand, is undeniable — rich and sonorous. His Sherlock rolls his R’s. It’s such a theatrical flourish. But then, as he says to a client: “Watson here will tell you that I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.”
He can be brusque and irascible one moment, gentle and compassionate the next. He’s often demanding of his landlady at 221B Baker St.: “Mrs. Hudson!” he’ll yell. “Mrs. Hudsoooooon!” His pipe is ever-present (in one episode, he uses tongs to grab a piece of coal out of the fire and uses it as a lighter). There’s a terrific physicality to his performance, and when he’s not wearing a deerstalker, his preferred headgear is the top hat. When I think of the show, it’s a collage of horse hooves on pavement, pipe smoke and Brett’s wonderful voice.
His Sherlock also has great comedic timing. A woman comes to ask for help and she hems and haws. “I can hardly imagine anything more strange, more utterly inexplicable than the situation in which I find myself,” she begins before he interrupts her and barks: “State your case!”
All of Doyle’s stories, save for 19, were adapted. (The series ended with Brett’s death in 1995 at 61.) But in the decades since, Hollywood executives seem to prefer adaptations that juice Doyle’s original work (Guy Ritchie’s 2009 “Sherlock Holmes” starring Robert Downey Jr.) or reimagine it for the present (the Benedict Cumberbatch series “Sherlock,” the Johnny Lee Miller series “Elementary” and the forthcoming Morris Chestnut series “Watson” that puts the good doctor at the forefront instead).
This makes sense. Endlessly remaking the same stories the same way isn’t particularly imaginative. But it also has the tinge of “straight adaptations won’t cut it with today’s audiences.” I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s the prevailing approach and it tends to render Sherlock as someone not quite recognizably human, but superhuman.
In “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” he’s wildly smart and observant, yes. But he’s not portrayed as a sentient computer, because human behavior isn’t a mystery if you’re smart enough and look closely enough. Rich people are consistently awful, and this adaptation conveys just how creepy they really are. Sherlock is a man of action when the need arises — I love the way Brett adopts a boxer’s stance in a pub brawl — but that’s rarely the point. He’s a master of disguise (Brett really does transform himself) and the series is also blissfully free of pushy underscoring.
Sherlock’s cocaine use is alluded to in early episodes but then the series abandons it altogether, owing to the sizable number of younger viewers. That’s a curious choice; showing drug use is verboten but showing murder is not. Sure, OK. But the Victorian setting itself creates all kinds of wonderful tension, with the clash of Sherlock’s eccentric personality in contrast to the propriety of the era.
Newer adaptations have tried to remedy the problem of women in Doyle’s stories, too often relegated to damsels in distress or household help. It’s interesting that no one has made something like “The Secret Life of Mrs. Hudson,” envisioning an entire existence of intrigue that somehow eludes Sherlock’s notice.
I tend to like the moments that don’t really have anything to do with the plot. Sherlock’s bubbling beakers and test tubes set up on a table, where he’s conducting various unexplained chemical experiments (at least one creates a noxious gas that forces him and Watson to throw open the window and stick their heads out in order to breathe). Or when Sherlock approaches a witness and notes that he has a French name. Huguenot actually, the man says. “But I’m as English in sympathy as you are, Mr. Homes. Am I under some sort of cloud because of my name?”
Watson interjects: “Oh, no, no, no — Holmes has a French grandmother.”
Sherlock gives an exceedingly annoyed look to his friend. It’s very funny.
Often the show ventures to the English countryside, of quiet lanes and rolling meadows and large estates. But Doyle never romanticized the setting, nor does the show: “It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”
In the Christmas-themed “The Blue Carbuncle” (Season 1, Episode 7), a nasty-tempered duchess is robbed of a valuable blue stone. Sherlock unravels the whodunit and in the end, as the culprit sits dejectedly by the fire in Sherlock’s study, there is no thrill. Sherlock keeps his face closed and maybe a little scolding. He’s probably disgusted by the man’s fumbling scheme, but he’s also compassionate about the circumstances, and he has decided on his own course of action that Scotland Yard would no doubt disagree with.
Unlike so many modern riffs on the Sherlock premise — outside consultants working hand-in-hand with law enforcement to solve crimes — Sherlock doesn’t seek friendship from the police or even respect them very much.
In that vein, I’d love to see Hollywood think outside the police-procedural box. Private investigators were once all over television. But I’d be especially interested in a series based on Cora May Strayer, a real Chicagoan who ran a detective agency during Sherlock’s era.
According to one newspaper account, “Standing at Van Buren and LaSalle streets yesterday afternoon in the presence of scores of pedestrians, Miss Cora M. Strayer, (of) 5443 Lake Avenue, pointed a revolver at Isaac Kitchin, who was about to jump from a third story window of the Stafford hotel. The man hastily retreated and a moment later was arrested.” Apparently he had been cheating and his wife hired Strayer to catch him in the act. In a different case, she went undercover as a cook in order to obtain evidence of yet another marriage falling apart.
In 1903, the Tribune profiled her (“Woman Directs a Detective Bureau”) and the story ends with a tantalizing quote: “If I were to write some of the strange things that have come under my eyes, they would not be believed.”
Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.
