Sherlock Holmes (TV Series) A Study in Scarlet (1968) User Reviews

A study in editing

[hte-trasme · 6/10 · 23 November 2009]

Though it is the first of the Sherlock Holmes stories, "A Study in Scarlet" is rarely adapted for production due to structural issues that make this difficult. Th BBC took on the challenge during its 1968 series of broadcasts with Peter Cushing as Holmes, and placed the story in between other Holmes mysteries in in the series rather than at the beginning. As such, the material dealing with the first meeting of Holmes and Watson can be discarded, although, oddly enough and perhaps as a remnant, Watson is still doubtful that Holmes can really make sweeping deductions from small details, and Holmes seems a little surprised that Watson is making notes on the case.

As "A Study in Scarlet" was a novel-length piece of writing with long sections set in Utah without Holmes, and this is a forty-eight minute program, cuts were necessary. The way they were done is workable and clever, with an opening sequence involving the victims that gives away a hint of backstory followed by the Holmes investigation, but it tends to turn the mystery, until the last few minutes arrives, into simple a puzzle without much human interest. Unusually for a 1968-era BBC production, scenes are very quick -- accommodating all the material that must be fit in -- and they left me wishing the pace could be more deliberate.

When the end does arrive, though, it is very impressive, with Larry Cross giving an excellent and very sympathetic performance as Jefferson Hope, and a well-conceived and effective final shot. Unfortunately among the other actors performances tend towards the wooden, and the American accents are very variable. Nigel Stock is a fine actor but an unnecessarily dim-witted Watson (for instance, hiding his gun behind an awkwardly upheld newspaper), and not even a charmingly and amusingly dim-witted one in the Nigel Bruce mold. Peter Cushing is very competent as an impatient, twitchy Sherlock Holmes, but some reason he doesn't come off as anything more than adequate and slightly superficial in this role for me. I liked what I have seen of his BBC predecessor Douglas Wilmer better.

In all, a competent and workmanlike adaptation that doesn't really come alive until after the murderer is discovered.

pretty good TV adaptation

[Prof-Hieronymos-Grost · 7/10 · 19 January 2009]

The body of a man is found dead in a deserted run down house, Inspectors Gregson and Lestrade are both on the case, meanwhile in Baker Street, Holmes(Peter Cushing) is baffling Dr Watson(Nigel Stock) with his deductive powers, which includes his claim that he will be called on to the case. Sure enough he is and he is soon on the case. Pretty decent colour version of Doyle's intricate debut novel, for those not familiar with the tale, it will provide plenty of glorious head scratching Holmes deductions, Good twist in the tale too, that has Holmes having second thoughts on what guilt really is. Cushing and Stock are both really good.

A Study in Scarlet

[Scarecrow-88 · 7/10 · 17 January 2010]

With little crime in London, a frustratingly bored Sherlock Holmes(Cushing)so desperately needs a case to solve in order to keep his creative juices fresh. Hence "A Study in Scarlet" where Scotland Yard are searching for the murderer of a lecherous American who is found poisoned in an abandoned hotel, a specific wedding ring near the crime scene along with the German term for revenge written in blood on a wall right above the body.

Two important key scenes occur at the beginning of the episode before Holmes and Watson spring into action. The first has someone removing a ring from the finger of a pretty dead woman presented in her casket(..the one who removes it clinches his fist tight informing us that he is very, very angry). The second features two Americans in a heated verbal exchange over an attractive daughter whose mother allowed them to rent rooms in their boardinghouse. Enoch Drebber(Craig Hunter)is persistent in his desire to snatch away Alice Charpentier(Edina Ronay)from her mother Madame Charpentier(Dorothy Edwards), at the behest of his fellow American colleague, Joseph Stangerson(Ed Bishop). Run off by Madame's son, Arthur(Larry Dann), Drebber is found later poisoned. Arthur is initially the number one suspect, but Holmes has other ideas. When Stangerson himself is visited by a mysterious figure who enters his room unannounced, through the window, later found stabbed in bed, Arthur is cleared and Holmes, along with Watson, develop their case. A major piece which might assist Holmes in his deductions are little white pills found at the scene of both crimes..this is where we see Holmes, the chemist(..using his little "laboratory" in his home)at work.

Like other episodes in the 60's BBC Sherlocks series, A Study in Scarlet is a mixture of video and film, but most of the story developments take place on dressed sets. Lots of fun clues and we see Holmes outsmart the other confident Inspectors, their mistakes and ill-fated assumptions playing folly to his superior methods of crime-solving. At the heart of this story is a tragic tale, with a bleak conclusion regarding the reasons behind the murders and the fate of the killer..it questions who the real victim really was. Again most of the joy for me is seeing Peter Cushing and Nigel Stock as Holmes and Watson, carrying top-heavy dialogue scenes, completely at home in their roles. To like these tales, you must enjoy seeing crimes solved, with mostly actors engaged in conversations over who murdered who, studying clues and penetrating the mystery. I think this is a great showcase for Holmes' amazing abilities, the way he can evaluate and analyze a crime scene and determine so much more than those assigned to find the murderer.

Compacted Presentation

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 9 April 2021]

One of the longer Holmes stories, leaving out the events in America. Instead we get the goings on in England. From there it follows things pretty much as written. Two men are at the center of things. Each of them is in serious trouble, one being a bit more evil. Cushing does another nice job as Holmes.

MURDER-- or JUSTICE?

[profh-1 · 6/10 · 5 December 2021]

This is a weird one. A man turns up dead, both Inspector Gregson and Inspector Lestrade are involved, Watson seems generally unaware of Holmes' methods, what almost seems simple is told in a very convoluted, confusing manner, and the Baker Street kids show up.

The problem, of course, is someone deciding, in the 2nd BBC series, to try adapting Doyle's very 1st Holmes story-- which was a short NOVEL-- in a single episode of the TV series. The entire opening sequence-- when Watson meets Holmes for the first time, and they decided to share the rent on a flat together-- is missing. You have to see the pilot of the Ronald Howard series back in 1954 to see that part of the story, but that episode then proceeded to tell a completely different story than this one.

The scene where Holmes tells Watson he's placed an ad in the paper, and to have his revolver ready, is clearly a tribute to a nearly-identical scene in Poe's "The Murders In The Rue Morgue". The later scene where a cabbie is asked up to help with a heavy piece of luggage, allowing Holmes to slap handcuffs on him, later wound up in the William Gillette SHERLOCK HOLMES stage play, and the Arthur Wontner film THE SLEEPING CARDINAL (alias SHERLOCK HOLMES' FATAL HOUR).

Doyle, like Poe before him and Christie after him, liked to do variations on themes, and this is very obvious when you compare A STUDY IN SCARLET and THE VALLEY OF FEAR. Both stories involved criminal gangs in America, a love triangle, and someone being hunted across Europe. They're like mirror-images of each other. In this one, a murderer is chased by a vengeful lover, in the latter, a Pinkerton man is pursued by a criminal who escaped the police after his gang was rounded up. It's easy to see how some fans might be confused at times as to which story they're actually watching.

The Gilberton "Classic Illustrated" comics version aside, this is the ONLY film adaptation of "SCARLET" I've ever seen. The 1933 film with the same name is in fact an adaptation of the 1931 novel "Six Hommes Morts" by Belgian author Stanislas-Andree Steeman. By rights, the Jeremy Brett series should have started with "A Study In Scarlet", then followed up with "The Sign Of Four"!

Peter Cushing complained bitterly about this series not allowing proper rehearsal time, and watching this episode I can see his point. Nigel Stock's performance in this one is the stiffest I've seen him do, there's a totally-blown line from Cushing that wound up in the finished recording, and overall, the whole thing looks and feels like an episode of Dan Curtis' daytime soap DARK SHADOWS, which was also known for looking cheap and having flubbed lines wind up being broadcast.

Even so, it's criminal that the BBC wiped 2/3rds of the episodes, and I wish all 16 of them were still intact and available, instead of just 6.

Rache -- Big Time.

[rmax304823 · 7/10 · 13 September 2014]

It's forty-eight minutes long and it's not bad at all. Homes (Peter Cushing) and Watson (Nigel Stock) solve two mysterious murders in which the killer has written on the wall in blood, "Rache," which is either an aborted attempt to write "Rachel" or the German word for "Revenge." Hint: Scotland Yard inspectors believe it to be the former.

The adaptation does what it can with Conan-Doyle's first published story of the famous detective, a longish novella. Hugh Leonard, the writer, has of necessity chopped out all the back story of lust and intrigue in what Conan-Doyle called "the Great American desert", which is not a desert at all, except culturally. The back story was dull anyway. We're interested in Sherlock Holmes and his operations, not in some piqued lover. There's a 1933 version floating around in the ether somewhere. Skip it.

I haven't read the story in years, yet it's the closest adaptation I've seen of "A Study in Scarlet." The tale is one of the most interesting in the canon, but it seems to be generally avoided by the movies and by television, probably because of all that tangential tramping around in Utah. It's certainly one of the most dramatically effective -- as in the final moments, when Holmes asks a cab driver to help him move some boxes and then claps a pair of handcuffs on a man who appears to be a completely innocent stranger.

The production values are good too, about at the level of the Fox pair from around 1940 and much higher than the Universal series.

Peter Cushing makes a satisfactory Holmes. He's less tic-y than Jeremy Brett, more friendly, less abrasive, but not as commanding as Basil Rathbone. Cushing was a nice guy, devastated by his wife's death, who carried on with a long career. It began in film as a homosexual director in the play-within-a-play in Hamlet. Bowing and swooping, he was a fine pouf. Nobody else has as much to do, and there are some weak performances. Edina Ronay, as the subject or object or target of the affections of one of the villains, is made up for 1968. And she's young enough but doesn't look at all comfortable with simple daintiness. She's beautiful, but in a way that suggests she could eat a man alive, beginning with his toes. Joe Melia as the chief scoundrel overacts to beat the band. And Jefferson Hope's name should be Jefferson Mope.

I recommend it, for fans of the canon or for the curious. It's a finely done mystery featuring an investigatory figure that has become iconic over the course of the last century.

Doyle's introduction of Holmes is adapted as Peter Cushing's third episode

[kevinolzak · 8/10 · 26 December 2022]

"A Study in Scarlet" was published in 1887 as the debut of Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes, here adapted as Peter Cushing's third episode since taking over for Douglas Wilmer (completed Aug. 2, 1968, broadcast Sept. 16). The backstory set in the US is necessarily jettisoned for a more compact presentation that fully engages the viewer in the utter frustration of Holmes as a man stifled without a spark of investigatory deduction, composing a newspaper article on the subject that astounds Nigel Stock's Dr. Watson, before being called in on a murder case involving two Scotland Yard inspectors. A drunken American rake is found dead in an abandoned hotel building, the German word for revenge, 'rache,' written in blood on the wall, allowing Holmes to reason that the culprit was six feet tall and had long fingernails to scrawl his message at eye level. A ring found near the corpse had been taken off of a dead woman's finger in the opening shot, while a second murder takes place soon after, this victim stabbed rather than poisoned, the killer leaving behind another vital clue that allows Holmes to use his chemistry skills to finalize the solution without leaving his Baker Street flat. In spite of its prominence as the first Holmes adventure, this has rarely been granted a proper film version, but to be able to view it as one of Cushing's very best episodes makes for a rewarding experience. This would be the only series appearance for Inspector Lestrade, as played by William Lucas, while George A. Cooper as Inspector Gregson would return just once in the lost entry "The Greek Interpreter."

A great episode from a troubled series.

[alexanderdavies-99382 · 8/10 · 31 August 2018]

It is no secret regarding the various difficulties which occurred during the making of this "Sherlock Holmes" series. Original leading man, Douglas Wilmer, had left the series after having a falling out with the BBC. By the time 13 more Holmes stories had been commissioned, Peter Cushing had stepped in to play the Baker Street sleuth. Consequently, he didn't retain overly fond memories of his time on the series. "A Study in Scarlet" makes for marvellous viewing, in spite of the changes made from the original novel. The episode makes no reference to Watson being introduced to Holmes after having been demobbed from the army. However, the actual plot is quite accurately depicted. Personally, I find Peter Cushing to be a superb Sherlock Holmes. Whilst I understand the actor was unhappy with his own performance, his usual solid professionalism is very much in evidence. He also manages to convey some of the character's personality traits: sudden impatience, pomposity regarding his own abilities, being a bit foolhardy at times etc. The episode is one of only 6 that exist in the television archive (thanks a lot BBC!) but all are worth watching.