Holmes improvement

In Sherlock Holmes news, there's an animated Sherlock Holmes in development now, but it won't be a kids' cartoon like Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century. It's based on a book series about Holmes's "Unexpurgated Adventures." That is, uncensored adventures with adult themes. I've never read it and have no idea what it will be like. I don't even know where the show will air once it's made.

Meanwhile, the anniversary of Jeremy Brett's death reminded me of the Granada TV series where he starred as Sherlock Holmes. Although in the later years, the quality went downhill and Brett's health declined, I still appreciated the early episodes. They never completed the full canon, and I actually wish they would have stopped sooner to let Brett rest and recover. Poor man.

While doing my chronology, I've continued listening to the BBC Radio shows starring Clive Merrison and Michael Williams. I just reached the "Empty House" episode, and I was fascinated by the changes to the story. Writer Bert Coules replays Holmes's letter to Watson from "The Final Problem," but then Watson wakes up from his nightmare to yet more grief. His wife Mary is dying, and we have a whole goodbye scene that's heartbreaking and more than we ever got from Conan Doyle. Some time later, Watson meets up with Stamford, who encourages Watson to write again, or failing that, to investigate cases with the police. Meanwhile, Ronald Adair has a card game, then gets murdered in his locked room. Watson goes to the scene to gawk with the crowds but there's a twist. The police coroner is late, so Lestrade invites Watson in to examine the body. Watson apparently also testifies at the inquest, and when he's leaving that, he runs into the old bookseller.

 

Holmes of course follows Watson home to reveal himself in Kensington, and I was all prepared to be angry with Holmes as usual. But instead I was surprised. With surgical precision, Coules has edited the story so that Holmes isn't so idiotic about his faked death. Coules cuts Colonel Moran out of Reichenbach Falls, so that he never witnesses Holmes surviving and he never throws rocks at him. It is rather a silly thing to do, and it makes Holmes faking his death thoroughly nonsensical. "I knew that 3 men wanted me dead, so I decided to fake my death so that I could capture them. Oh by the way, Moran saw me alive, but I decided to stay dead, even though he's one of the 3 men, and could have told anybody else I was alive. Woops!" Some people on the internet argued with me that Holmes's explanation in EMPT makes sense, but it bloody well doesn't. Many Sherlockians have complained about it, not just me, and it's in the notes on the New Annotated Sherlock Holmes by Leslie Klinger too. Back in 1972, D. Martin Dakin even found it kinder to imagine that Holmes actually had amnesia when he faked his death and that he was too proud to reveal the truth to Watson when he came back to London. Either way, Watson forgiving Holmes's nonsense story is hard to believe.

But back to the BBC Radio episode. By cutting Moran out of Reichenbach Falls, Bert Coules has removed major problems in the story. Now Holmes in fact has a reason to stay dead for 3 years. And Holmes says that Moran didn't find out he was alive until 1894, when Holmes spoke to Moran's henchman Parker. (This Parker guy is mentioned in EMPT, but it's implied that Holmes was just revealing that he was back in town; Moran already knew Holmes was alive.) With this simple change, Holmes's actions become rational, if painful. He no longer seems so callous and hurtful to Watson. He seems genuinely sorry, and Watson forgiving Holmes becomes more understandable. What a vast improvement. Conan Doyle might have thought that having the villain attack Holmes was more exciting, but it makes his Hiatus pointless.