Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking | |
---|---|
Written by | Allan Cubitt |
Directed by | Simon Cellan Jones |
Starring | Rupert Everett Ian Hart Jonathan Hyde Eleanor David Helen McCrory Neil Dudgeon |
Music by | Adrian Johnston |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Producer | Elinor Day |
Cinematography | David Katznelson |
Editor | Paul Garrick |
Running time | 99 minutes |
Production companies | BBC Tiger Aspect Productions |
Original release | |
Network | BBC One |
Release | 26 December 2004 |
Related | |
The Hound of the Baskervilles |
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking is a British television film originally broadcast on BBC One in the UK on 26 December 2004. Produced by Tiger Aspect Productions, it was written by Allan Cubitt and was a sequel to the same company's adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles , made for the BBC two years previously. [1] Although Silk Stocking retained the same Dr. Watson, Ian Hart, this time the character of Sherlock Holmes was played by Rupert Everett.
In November 1903, young women are being killed in London, each with a silk stocking stuffed down her throat. Watson seeks help from the retired and disenchanted Holmes, who determines that the victims are well-born ladies, not prostitutes. Evidence found includes a thumbprint, a pair of ladies' dancing shoes, broken glass, a strong smell of chloroform and a silk stocking removed from a victim's gullet. It seems that the killer has a foot fetish.
Holmes questions a survivor - a young girl who was apparently set free by her captor because she has a club foot - and arranges for her to "accidentally" see the footman that he suspects is the killer, despite his ironclad alibis. The girl identifies him as her kidnapper, but the thumbprint clears the suspect. Holmes then baits a trap for the killer: he uses the sister of a victim and has her perform in a classical tableau at an event attended by the King and Queen. Her Grecian-Roman costume is revealing, and her sandals expose her feet. After the performance, she walks away to be alone; the suspect drugs her and is quickly caught by Holmes and placed in custody. The sister returns home and is tucked into bed by her father.
However, the suspect's thumbprint doesn't match the evidence. Holmes suspects the killer has an identical twin, and that the real killer is still on the loose. Holmes telephones the father of the "bait" sister to warn him, but the real killer has kidnapped her from her bed just minutes earlier. The viewer sees the killer carrying her over his shoulder as blood drips from her face, where he cut her with broken glass.
The police force the other twin to lead them to his brother, but he escapes the police. Holmes finds the killer and his victim just in time; the young woman has a silk stocking tied around her neck, and Watson has to cut it and perform something that looks like CPR, which was known in similar form from the late-18th century but did not come into standardised common usage until the mid-20th century. Holmes gets the killer twin to confess that he wanted his victims' attention, because they looked at him while in captivity. Both twins are then taken into custody.
At the end, Watson marries his fiancée Jenny Vandeleur, an American psychoanalyst who had aided in the investigation. They leave on honeymoon, and Holmes is left sitting alone at the table.
Some co-production funding for the drama was provided by United States PBS broadcaster WGBH, and it was later shown on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre in 2005. The original title for the production was Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Season, the name being changed only a few weeks before transmission. [2] While Ian Hart returned from the earlier The Hound of the Baskervilles film, in this film Rupert Everett replaced Richard Roxburgh as Sherlock Holmes. [1] Guy Henry who had earlier portrayed Sherlock Holmes in Young Sherlock: The Mystery of the Manor House was cast in the minor role of Mr. Bilney. [1]
Directed by Simon Cellan Jones, the production filmed in and around London in late summer 2003. [1] The musical score is by Adrian Johnston. [1]
The book given to Holmes by Mrs Vandeleur is Psychopathia Sexualis . [3]
Unlike Baskervilles, this production was an original story written by Allan Cubitt, [4] although the script used some lines of dialogue for Holmes taken from Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories. Set in the early 1900s, Cubitt provided Watson with a new wife and indicates that it had been some time since he and Holmes last worked together.
"This is a departure," said Rebecca Eaton, executive producer for WGBH in Boston, which produced the show with the BBC and Tiger Aspect Productions. "That's what we say at PBS when we don't know what is going to happen. We could be arrested by the Conan Doyle police - or at least severely reprimanded - because we are departing from the canon." [3]
Reviews of the drama were generally mixed. "I did feel that this peculiar tale was intended to tickle American tootsies," Nancy Banks-Smith wrote in The Guardian . "The king was announced as 'King Edward the Seventh', Dr Watson married a Yankee psychiatrist [psychoanalyst], the duchess was having an affair with the footman, well, two as it turned out, and the London fog never lifted." [5]
The film had a rating of 75 out of 100 on Metacritic in 2014. [6] Robert Bianco of USA Today remarked, "Everett sticks close enough to the outline created by Arthur Conan Doyle to be recognizably Sherlockian, and yet he deviates enough to create an amusing character all his own." [7] Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal wrote, "Everett carries the role of the master detective off with dispatch—a portrayal rich in tortured silences and seasoned with touches of campy authority." [8] Marilyn Stasio, writing for The Daily Telegraph , called Everett's interpretation "elegant and decidedly decadent". [3]
Melanie McFarland of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer said, "The Case of the Silk Stocking contains more than the usual share of pedestrian turns of phrase, and Neil Dudgeon's Inspector Lestrade is less than an afterthought here. Everett makes up for it with a haunting portrayal." [9] Brian Lowry of Variety wrote, "The Case of the Silk Stocking is a rather wan addition to the Holmes filmography, yet respectable enough in showcasing the character's cerebral charms. If push comes to shove, though, when all the revisionism's done, I prefer my Holmes in black-and-white." [10]
The Daily Telegraph rated Everett as number 12 on their 20 greatest Sherlock Holmes. [11]
The film was released on DVD in 2005, with an audio commentary by Cellan Jones and producer Elinor Day.
The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of the four crime novels by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Originally serialised in The Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, it is set largely in Dartmoor, Devon, in England's West Country and follows Holmes and Watson investigating the legend of a fearsome, diabolical hound of supernatural origin. This was the first appearance of Holmes since his apparent death in "The Final Problem", and the success of The Hound of the Baskervilles led to the character's eventual revival.
A Study in Scarlet is an 1887 detective novel by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle. The story marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who would become the most famous detective duo in English literature. The book's title derives from a speech given by Holmes, a consulting detective, to his friend and chronicler Watson on the nature of his work, in which he describes the story's murder investigation as his "study in scarlet": "There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it."
"The Boscombe Valley Mystery", one of the fifty-six short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the fourth of the twelve stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in the Strand Magazine in October 1891.
Detective Inspector G. Lestrade is a fictional character appearing in the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle. Lestrade's first appearance was in the first Sherlock Holmes story, the 1887 novel A Study in Scarlet. His last appearance is in the 1924 short story "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs", which is included in the collection The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
"The Adventure of the Norwood Builder", one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the second tale from The Return of Sherlock Holmes. The story was first published in Collier's (US) on 31 October 1903 and in The Strand Magazine (UK) in November 1903.
"The Adventure of the Dancing Men" is a Sherlock Holmes story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as one of 13 stories in the cycle published as The Return of Sherlock Holmes in 1905. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in December 1903, and in Collier's in the United States on 5 December 1903.
The stories of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have been very popular as adaptations for the stage, and later film, and still later television. The four volumes of the Universal Sherlock Holmes (1995) compiled by Ronald B. De Waal lists over 25,000 Holmes-related productions and products. They include the original writings, "together with the translations of these tales into sixty-three languages, plus Braille and shorthand, the writings about the Writings or higher criticism, writings about Sherlockians and their societies, memorials and memorabilia, games, puzzles and quizzes, phonograph records, audio and video tapes, compact discs, laser discs, ballets, films, musicals, operettas, oratorios, plays, radio and television programs, parodies and pastiches, children's books, cartoons, comics, and a multitude of other items — from advertisements to wine — that have accumulated throughout the world on the two most famous characters in literature."
Sherlock Holmes has long been a popular character for pastiche, Holmes-related work by authors and creators other than Arthur Conan Doyle. Their works can be grouped into four broad categories:
The Hound of the Baskervilles is a 1981 Soviet television film adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. It was the third instalment in the TV series about adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.
The Hound of the Baskervilles is a 2002 television adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1902 novel of the same name.
Sherlock Holmes is an American detective television series syndicated in the autumn of 1954, based on the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. The 39 half-hour mostly original stories were produced by Sheldon Reynolds and filmed in France by Guild Films, starring Ronald Howard as Holmes and H. Marion Crawford as Watson. Archie Duncan appeared in many episodes as Inspector Lestrade. Richard Larke, billed as Kenneth Richards, played Sgt. Wilkins in about fifteen episodes. The series' associate producer, Nicole Milinaire, was one of the first women to attain a senior production role in a television series.
Sherlock is a British mystery crime drama television series based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes detective stories. Created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, the show stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as Doctor John Watson. Thirteen episodes have been produced, with four three-part series airing from 2010 to 2017 and a special episode that aired on 1 January 2016. The series is set in the present day in which it aired. The one-off special features a Victorian-period fantasy resembling the original Holmes stories.
The Hound of the Baskervilles is a 1983 British made-for-television mystery thriller film directed by Douglas Hickox, starring Ian Richardson as Sherlock Holmes and Donald Churchill as Dr. John H. Watson. It is based on Arthur Conan Doyle's 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel by Lyndsay Faye which pits Sherlock Holmes against Jack the Ripper.
The House of Silk is a Sherlock Holmes novel written by British author Anthony Horowitz, published in 2011. This book's publication was the first time the Conan Doyle Estate had authorised a new novel that is not a Sherlock Holmes pastiche.
The Hound of the Baskervilles is a 1972 American made-for-television mystery film directed by Barry Crane and starring Stewart Granger as Sherlock Holmes and Bernard Fox as Doctor Watson. The movie is based on Arthur Conan Doyle's 1902 Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.
The Hound of the Baskervilles is a 1982 British television serial made by the BBC. It was produced by Barry Letts, directed by Peter Duguid, and starred Tom Baker as Sherlock Holmes and Terence Rigby as Doctor Watson. The adaptation aired as a four-part serial. The serial is based on Arthur Conan Doyle's 1902 Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. The music score was composed and conducted by Carl Davis.
"The Abominable Bride" is a special episode of the British television programme Sherlock. The episode was broadcast on BBC One, PBS and Channel One on 1 January 2016. It depicts the characters of the show in an alternative timeline: the Victorian London setting of the original stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. The title is based on the quote "Ricoletti of the club foot and his abominable wife" from "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual" (1893), which refers to a case mentioned by Holmes. The story also draws on elements of original Conan Doyle stories of Holmes such as "The Five Orange Pips" (1891) and "The Final Problem" (1893).
Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson is a television series created by Sheldon Reynolds and based on characters and storylines from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. It starred Geoffrey Whitehead, Donald Pickering and Patrick Newell in the title roles of Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson and Inspector Lestrade respectively. The series is considered rather obscure, and was filmed on a relatively low budget in Poland. The series combined adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle's source stories with original screenplays that saw Holmes face brand new cases.
Allan Cubitt is a British television, film, and theatre writer, director, and producer and former teacher, best known for his work on Prime Suspect II and The Fall.