Product Description
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Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke return for their final bow in
THE MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. Closing out the long running
Granada series, Holmes and Watson are back on the case with six
more arduous mysteries to solve. The ailing Jeremy Brett
completes his portrayal of the Great Detective in style and
Holmes' brother Mycroft plays a crucial role in the series.
Episodes: The Three Gables, The Dying Detective, The Golden
Pince-Nez, The Red Circle, The Mazarin Stone, The Cardboard Box
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Jeremy Brett ended his riveting run as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's
famous sleuth in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1994), the final
set of episodes in the long-running Granada Television series. In
The Three Gables, an old widow receives a suspicious offer of a
large sum of money to move out of her depressing mansion and
leave absolutely everything behind. Holmes looks into this
strange proposition and comes face to face with an enforcer and
powerful pugilist, who Holmes cuts down to size with verbal
agility. This adaptation may, in all honesty, be an improvement
on Doyle's original story. The Dying Detective features Brett in
a particularly strenuous and emotionally compelling performance
as the Great Detective. Following his uncharacteristically
provocative threat to expose a murderer, Holmes becomes mortally
ill and delirious. Brett, who was actually suffering from cardiac
problems at the time, certainly looks the part of the doomed
hero, and his urgency in the role is haunting and poignant.
With Dr. Watson (the also excellent Edward Hardwicke) absent
from The Golden Pince-Nez, Holmes is joined by his brother
Mycroft (Charles Gray) in an investigation into the murder of a
secretary to a chain-smoking, invalid professor. Gray's amusing,
inscrutable performance helps supplement that of the valiantly
struggling Brett, whose considerable problems a decade
into the series are well known to his devoted fans. The Red
Circle draws upon facts related to a one-time, secret Italian
terrorist organization. Holmes and Watson investigate a
mysterious lodger who tells Holmes of her ties to the Red Circle
and of her efforts, along with those of her missing husband, to
break free of the Circle's long arm of revenge.
The ailing Brett largely stepped aside for The Mazarin Stone, a
radical reinvention of the Doyle story, which was based on a
one-act play also written by Doyle and performed in 1921. Instead
of Holmes solving the crime, this time it is his brother, Mycroft
(Gray again), ably assisted by Watson. (Sherlock does show up
from time to time in a dream-like refrain, thinking through some
knotty problem in a moonlighted garden.) Despite the absence of
Brett from the main proceedings, the episode is still fun to
watch, if largely out of curiosity to see Mycroft in action.
Controversial upon its first publication in 1893, The Cardboard
Box confronts some nasty consequences of adultery. Holmes and
Watson link the grisly mailing of two severed human ears with a
complicated love triangle. Holmes, an expert in ears, naturally,
has no problem with the mystery of where they came from. But
toward what end mortals pursue "this circle of misery, violence,
and fear" is another question. Though still ill at the time and
at the end of his Holmes career, Brett gives a focused,
remarkable performance while Hardwicke lends strong support.
--Tom Keogh