The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Vol. 4 - The Devil's Foot / Silver Blaze / The Bruce Partington Plans

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Holmes, excellent television...
Review: These three Holmes episodes are a good variety of Holmes stories, and possibly might be the best DVD for the starting Holmes viewer. Brett and Hardwicke make the best Holmes/Watson ever seen on screen. The adaption of the Conan Doyle stories to TV work perfectly and are some of the best written, directed and acted television made yet.

Particularly memorable are the drug sequences in Devil's Foot, along with the story's very odd and lucid atmosphere. Bruce Partington is one of the best episodes since it has brilliant interaction between Sherlock, Holmes, Mycroft, and Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock's ever working, ever chiding house keeper. This story based around stolen plans for a top secret submarine puts Holmes through his greatest odds against a case with a thinnest thread to begin. And it is also the case with the greatest political conseqences for the world. It seems everytime the highest level of government calls on Holmes he winds up going to the furthest extreme, such as the cat burglery he commits in this episode. Arthur Conan Doyle's writing plays on so many levels and in Bruce Partington it is particularly adept because he writes about the arms race and balance of power in Europe that would eventually snap into World War One. His stories of Holmes also persevere because of the underlying optimism of his Britain; he writes the main criminals as generally rich and priviledged while the average man might be grubby, unrefined and ignorant, is extremely loyal and hardworking. It is no doubt why these are classic literature, and now classic television.