Sorry, I won’t be gratifying your desire to be abused. Not into that. But 'splain watcha mean by ham. Overacting? You wanted a cooler Holmes? More modest & subdued? Shrinking, perhaps?
ETA and seriously: toward the end of the series, Brett was quite ill IIRC.
I thought Brett was a little too faithful to the originals. It kinda felt like just watching someone read the stories out loud, and I like my adaptations to make some attempt to bring something new to the originals.
So it’s Cumberbatch for me to. They’re good at referencing the original stories, but then putting a modern twist on it.
Oops! Yes, Duval.
I like Cumberbatch\Freeman best. I also quite like Lee Mill\Lui in Elementary.
Should I see myself out?
I did not much like Downey\Law, but more because of the story\director than with their performances.
Brett, of course.
I got nothing else. He is Holmes. When I think of Holmes, he has Brett’s face.
I haven’t seen Elementary yet. As far as Downey/Law, I thought the stories were great, interesting action fun. But it wasn’t Sherlock Holmes, no matter what the label says on the package.
I hate bandwagons. If I were a dentist, I’d be the one who recommends sugary gum. In this case though, yes, Jeremy Brett was the best.
*Elementary *is really good. The Holmes / Watson relationship is very different from the books. i.e. An undercurrent of sexual tension. The Holmes character seems pretty accurate considering he’s been brought into the modern world. This season his brother Mycroft has been featured in several episodes.
I am more used to Watson being kind of dumb and the comic release. Watson is very smart in Elementary. She’s becoming Holmes’ protege.
I haven’t seen Sherlock yet.
Basil Rathbone was Holmes until Jeremy Brett came along and dethroned him. Everyone else is a poor third.
Brett and Cumberbatch are the correct answers, of course. Isn’t it surprising how Spielberg’s Young Sherlock Holmes disappeared without a trace? I don’t recall it ever popping up on cable.
Awww… thanks for that handy link. Just listening to the theme music took me back. Jeremy Brett was a handsome devil.
Anyone remember him as Freddy Eynsford-Hill in the 1964 movie version of My Fair Lady (the one with Audrey Hepburn as Eliza)? BTW, that was not his voice singing “On the Street Where You Live.”
It wasn’t all that bad… (Okay, yeah…) No, really: it had some good bits and some clever bits, and the “Ramitep” chant music was a nice nod to Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana.” It was… Well, it was Spielberg. Sherlock Holmes meets The Goonies.
(And if you are sent a dream of me, nuh uh, wasn’t me, I didn’t do it, I was visiting the Bowl Shaped World that whole weekend, that’s my alibi and I’m sticking to it.)
Jeremy Brett. I’ve seen the entire series several times. I got to see Brett and one of the Watsons on stage in London in Holmes play in about 1989 or 1990.
I can’t watch any other Holmes adaptations other than Brett.
And another vote for Brett. He is the ultimate “traditional” Holmes–and yes, I do mean the very last. It is difficult to imagine anyone else doing the character better.
For non-traditional interpretations, I’m quite fond of Cumberbatch and Downey both–they both hit different aspects of the spirit of the character without being slaves to the letter.
As others have said Jeremy Brett was very true to the original stories. Edward Hardwicke (and there was another as Watson in the beginning of the series) were very good too.
I haven’t seen either the new, updated series on either the BBC or American TV (Elementary) simply because the stories just can’t be translated into the 21st century.
I did not like the Rathbone Sherlock series and they made Nigel Bruce as Watson look like a buffon instead of a competent sidekick.
I really did, however, enjoy the Robert Downey/Jude Law movies. They at least kept the stories in the same period and added some good humor.
Bob
Also, IMHO, I believe that only Joan Hickson can play Jane Marple and only David Suchet can play Poirot (although I really don’t like either person a whole lot).
Agree.
As so many others have said, Jeremy Brett. It certainly helped that the Hawkesworth series was also well-written and the production design was perfect, but Brett was the perfect Holmes. The series was great until they started doing padded, bloated adaptations near the end. Brett’s illness was a big contributor, of course, but that still doesn’t excuse the abominable adaptation they did of The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire.
I actually preferred David Burke, the first Watson to Brett’s Holmes, but only because he appeared to be younger. Hardwicke was an excellent Watson, but his gray hair made him look too old.
Brett, by the way, apparently had played Watson to Charlton Heston’s Sherlock Holmes onstage in Crucifer of Blood. I’ved seen a filmed performance of Heston as Holmes, and he doesn’t appeal to me. I have a hard time imagining Brett as Watson, these days. (Brett had also played Dracula on the West Coast in the 1970s re-staging, according to my playbill. I’d love to have seen that). Hard to watch Brett as Freddy in My Fair Lady anymore, too.
Aside from Brett, Basil Rathbone looked the part, as if he’d stepped from the original illustrations. And the first two Rathbone films, Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, were done as period pieces, not set in then-contemporary England fighting Nazis and the like. And Nigel Bruce’s Watson wasn’t quite so bumbling.
John Wood played an excellent Holmes onstage on Broadway in a 1970s revival of the Gillette/Doyle play. I’ve seen other Holmes adaptations onstage, buit the Holmes actors generally don’t stick in my mind.
In general, “young” Holmeses don’t work for me. I’ve seen several of them, and they don’t capture the proper “feel” at all. Nor do “old” Holmses. George C. Scott didn’t work for me in They Might be Giants, and the pictures I’ve senm of Peter Cushing in the BBC series didn’t look right to me.
I’m not that fond of Nicol Williamson in Seven per Cent Solution, much as I like him in other things.
I’ve watched everything.
Jeremy Brett is the best Sherlock.
Martin Freeman is the best Watson.
Charles Gray is the best Mycroft.
Sean Pertwee is the best Lestrade.
Now all I need is to see this in one actual episode.
Agreed, except the recent “updatings” are at the very bottom. If you want a modern British detective, there are lots of good originals to choose from. Using the name “Sherlock” is just a cheap, lazy gimmick to get attention.
I really loved Ustinov’s version.
Really don’t see this, which is why I like Elementary. I’d stop watching if I perceived they were going this route, I think.
Me, I like RDJ’s Sherlock for “traditional” and while I love the BBC modernisation, I prefer Elementary as a show - for instance, greatly preferred its takes on Adler and Moriarty.