Not an ideal Holmes. (Television).(Sherlock Holmes)

Publication: Spectator

Publication Date: 28-DEC-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)

Heavens, Hound of the Baskervilles (BBC 1) made for a gory Boxing Day. We watched the prison warders being sucked slowly and lethally into the mire, and saw Sir Charles's face, with great chunks eaten out of it, as if someone had tried carving a turkey without a knife. Just as Andrew Davies famously puts in the sex that authors of the past might have included if the conventions of the time had permitted, so Allan Cubitt, who adapted this, inserted the violence that old milksop Conan Doyle had squeamishly left out. Doyle even had a happy ending, with Sir Henry Baskerville about to marry the villain's beautiful wife, played here by Neve McIntosh. In the novel she is found trussed up and muffled. In the film, she was distinctly...

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