Review:Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Link/Christopher Roden
This review of the TV episode "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Link" was written by Christopher Roden and published in the The Parish Magazine (No. 7, october 1992).
Review
- Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Link
- Written by Neil Crombie
- Yorkshire TV: 'Science Fiction'; First broadcast Thursday 15 October 1992.
Reviewed by Christopher Roden
Cast
Sherlock Holmes : Reece Dinsdale
Doctor Watson : Gerald Horan [1]
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle : Paul Darrow
If we ponder quite why television producers continue to link the name of Sherlock Holmes with inane productions such as Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Link, we are likely to draw the conclusion that it is the only way they can conceivably expect anyone to watch their programmes. This latest farrago does nothing for anyone's reputation and one wonders why television companies squander valuable funds in allowing such nonsense to be prepared for our screens.
The idea that Conan Doyle was in any way connected with the Piltdown forgery has already been dismissed. Should anyone have any doubts about the matter, they will find sensibly reasoned explanations in two valuable publications: Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery (Frank Spencer: Natural History Museum/Oxford University Press, 1990) and The Curious Incident of the Missing Link (Douglas Elliott: Bootmakers of Toronto Occasional Papers, No.2, 1988).
The programme was introduced by Tom Baker who, readers will recall, was one of the less memorable portrayers of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes first appeared staring at a skull which, on the evidence of this dramatisation, had more acting ability than Reece Dinsdale. Dawson, the scientist, was seen clutching a pristine copy of The Lost World in an edition not mentioned in any respectable bibliography: Watson observed that the book was written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, to be told by Holmes: 'Conan Doyle is a spinner of lurid and sensational yarns of the worst sort.' It is a pity that the play's author did not read through his own script, as the sentiments are equally applicable to his own work.
Conan Doyle was portrayed as an idiotic, bumbling, upper-class twit. When first seen, he was emerging from his home a stone-fronted mansion which bore no resemblance to the Windlesham it was intended to represent. More interestingly, a seance had just been concluded — a seance at which Madame Blavatsky, the medium, had been present. Blavatsky was portrayed as an attractive young woman in her mid 20s something quite remarkable as she would, in fact, have been eighty-one in 1912, the year in which the play was set. At least she would have been had she not died in 1891! When Holmes spoke the word 'Fraud' during her ouija board session, she rose to her feet and cried: 'I can't go on there are negative forces at work!' From my viewpoint, the negative forces were those involved in the production of this programme. There were further inaccuracies: Dawson, who died in August 1916, was given a premature burial in 1912; Tielhard de Chardin, the Jesuit priest and budding palaeontologist, was given a part of far greater prominence than could be justified by his true role in events.
Dinsdale portrayed Holmes in a manner which suggested he had an unpleasant smell under his nose; Gerald Horan's [1] Watson was more Brucian than Bruce himself; and Paul Darrow's Conan Doyle was so fatuous as to defy description.
The ending of the play produced a hitherto unknown Sherlockian puzzle: Watson had to go and visit his brother. Was this, we asked, a second brother who was not mentioned in all of the sixty stories? or was the befuddled doctor about to be asked to return the watch which he had acquired in The Sign of the Four?!
What more need I say?
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Typo: it's Gerard Horan.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
