A Scandal in Bohemia
The first episode in the Granada series, A Scandal in Bohemia is the story of Irene Adler and how she beat Sherlock Holmes at his own game. Features Watson’s wandering wound, Holmes’s ability to extract information about a person from their appearance, Holmes in a number of disguises (and Jeremy Brett’s astonishing gift of inhabiting a character inhabiting another character), and the smallest pistol ever seen on television.
The Dancing Men
Cryptograms! Ciphers! Strange and threatening Americans! In The Dancing Men, Holmes must translate a series of drawings of stick figures that spell out a message of doom for American Elsie Cubitt, the wife of a wealthy English landowner who knew very little about her before marrying her. An episode of men turning themselves into absolute pretzels rather than ask a woman a question.
The Naval Treaty
Percy Phelps, an old school friend of Watson’s, has managed to lose an important treaty between Britain and Italy, and he has been in an absolute panic for weeks. How can a document disappear from a room in the Foreign Office when no one is in it? Why is Holmes shooting bullets into the wall? And exactly how much hot water does Holmes need Mrs. Hudson to bring him?
The Solitary Cyclist
A lovely young music teacher, and avid bicyclist, named Violet Smith is being stalked by a bearded man in black, as she bikes from the train station to her pupil’s home at a magnificent estate in Surrey. Here we see Holmes demonstrate his finest boxing form, explore the intricacies of the rites of the Church of England, and delve into the mysteries of South African gold mines – all accompanied by characters with spectacular facial hair.
A Crooked Man
A “daughter of the regiment,” detecting footprints on a stone patio, a betrayal in the Levant, and Fiona Shaw! Holmes and Watson are called to solve the death of a retired colonel who had served in India. Supposedly the colonel had a happy marriage – but did he really? And who is David?
The Speckled Band
A deeply unpleasant stepfather, a mysterious death, sisters who are so frightened their hair has turned white – Sherlock Holmes once again rides to the rescue of a terrorized woman on the brink of leaving an unhappy home for a happy marriage. Can Holmes and Watson solve this classic locked-room mystery?
The Blue Carbuncle
A beautiful – and large – blue gemstone is stolen from the Countess of Morcar while she is Christmas shopping in London. Easy enough to pin it on a hotel repairman who has a prior history of crime, but he insists that since his marriage he’s reformed. A goose-buying syndicate, an old hat, and the cheer of the Christmas season create a memorable episode for Holmes and Watson.
The Copper Beeches
Violet Hunter comes to Holmes and Watson for help in an unusual case: she’s been offered a governess position, but the employer insists that she cut her beautiful chestnut hair. The position is odd in other ways, too – she has to wear an electric blue dress and sit by a window at certain hours of the day. The episode features a young Natasha Richardson, a lecherous and leering Joss Ackland, and a country estate named for trees that don’t exist on it anymore.
The Greek Interpreter
We are introduced to Mycroft Holmes! He asks Holmes and Watson to investigate the case of a Greek translator who’s been abducted and forced to translate for nefarious characters.
The Norwood Builder
A young lawyer is in peril – he’d just drawn up a will for a new client, who had made the young lawyer his sole heir. But the client – a builder in Lower Norwood – appears to be dead. The lawyer is being pursued by the police for murdering the builder. Can Holmes and Watson clear the lawyer’s name?
The Resident Patient
A young, successful doctor comes to Holmes because his benefactor, Mr. Blessington, is freaking out – terrible dreams, night sweats, hallucinations. Soon after, Blessington hangs himself. Or does he? Holmes and Watson uncover the real story.
The Red-Headed League
A red-haired shop-owner is presented with an amazing opportunity, meant only for red-haired men – come to an office and copy out the A volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica. But suddenly, he reports for work and the office is shut down. What’s going on?
The Final Problem
In the heartbreaking finale of the first season of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Watson writes of Holmes’s final showdown with his nemesis Moriarty.
The Empty House
Sherlock Holmes’s remarkable return to Baker Street, as he eliminates the last of Moriarty’s gang and Watson, for some inexplicable reason, dons a fez.
The Priory School
The heir to the Duke of Holdernesse has disappeared from his posh school. Eton jackets, bicycle tires, and a search around the moors of Yorkshire leads to the limestone caves of the Hellfire Club – a site of debauchery so appealing, Benjamin Franklin visited more than once.
The Musgrave Ritual
Holmes – somewhat reluctantly, and incidentally on drugs – takes Watson to visit his old school acquaintance Reginald Musgrave, the scion of one of the oldest families in Sussex. Musgrave’s butler has been acting very strangely, and there’s an ancient document – a ritual – that has haunted the family since the 17th Century. Can Holmes and Watson solve the case? Of course they can – that’s a given. But what else is entailed? That’s the fun part.
The Abbey Grange
Sir Eustace Brackenstall has been murdered, and Holmes and Watson rush to the crime scene. But all is not as it seems. A bell-pull, some empty glasses of port, and a “multiplex” tool (who knew they had Swiss army knives back in the day) with a corkscrew in it prove to be the deciding factors in what would be a locked room mystery…were it not for the open window.
The Man with the Twisted Lip
A missing opium addict leads Holmes and Watson to another case missing persons case entirely – that of Neville St. Clair, a businessman who goes to London every day for work. But one day his wife spots him in the upper window of an opium den – and then he disappears completely, leaving behind only his overcoat, which is stuffed with loose change. An enormous yellow sponge proves the tool to solve the case.
The Six Napoleons
Five little busts of Napoleon have been stolen and smashed. Is it an obsession with the depredations of the Bonaparte campaign through Europe? It was a package of six – where is the final statuette? And how can Holmes and Watson solve this mystery?
The Sign of Four: Part One
Holmes and Watson are summoned to help Miss Mary Morstan, who has been apparently deprived of a great fortune. But what do Henry Irving, Oscar Wilde, and Bram Stoker have to do with any of it? Turns out…everything.
The Sign of Four: Part Two
We’re racing along Holmes and Watson as they follow Very Good Dog Toby along the Thames. A very slow so-called high-speed race and a mudbath later, and we are back at 221B, where after copious amounts of whisky, Jonathan Small (aka John Thaw, aka Endeavor Morse) tells everyone how he came by the fortune and what he’s done with it.
The Devil’s Foot
Holmes is supposedly on vacation for his health – but he and Watson are interrupted by a vicar who is concerned about his parishoner Tregennis, who’d been playing cards with his siblings and then arrived the next morning to encounter them all dead or crazed. Is it poison? Or is it poison?
Silver Blaze
A prominent raceshorse with a magnificent pedigree is missing. His trainer is dead. And…a guard dog didn’t bark. The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime provides the essential clue that allows Holmes and Watson to solve the case.
Wisteria Lodge
A cartography aficianado, a Spanish visitor (because we can’t have an ACD story without the othering of the…other), and a rather sinister Inspector Baynes – and a spirited pair of children – bring Holmes and Watson to Surrey, where they have to solve a distinctly Iberian mystery.
The Bruce Partingon Plans
We’ll never know who Bruce Partington was, but his plans for a secret submarine are the sole concern of this episode. Holmes becomes a submarine expert, Mycroft is bestirred from his usual rounds, and absolutely nothing is as it seems apart from oysters being in season.
The Hound of the Baskervilles: Part 1
“Mr. Holmes. They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!” With that statement, Holmes and Watson – mostly Watson – are off to Dartmoor. A horrific, large, possibly supernatural dog is haunting the moorland, and Sir Henry Baskerville is the probable target. Is the moor truly haunted?
The Hound of the Baskervilles: Part 2
Holmes reveals himself to Watson and Mortimer, and introduces his only attempt at cooking – a cold stew that even Watson refuses to eat. Is Beryl Stapleton who she says she is? What happens to her brother as he runs through the moor at night? Why is the dog green?
Hound of the Baskervilles: Richard Roxburgh version!
We’re comparing the Richard Roxburgh version of Hound of the Baskervilles to the Jeremy Brett version. Roxburgh is a very different actor, and the story is told in a different way as well – leaving out the Lankford family entirely, and focusing more on wide panoramic shots of the moor. Sir Henry is not the son but the nephew of Sir Charles. And a host of other differences that true Sherlockians will enjoy.
Hound of the Baskervilles: Richard Roxburgh Part Deux
Yes, and this is Part Two! We love this version. So good. Definitely better than the Granada version.
The Disappearance of Lady Carfax
A deeply unsatisfying episode by Granada – who knew that women had the ability to do what they wanted, when they wanted? Lady Frances Carfax has disappeared from a hotel in the Lake District. So many men are deeply concerned.
The Problem of Thor Bridge
A Brazilian wife, a blameless governess, and a whole lot of rhododenrons – Rachel and Laura unpack Winchester Prison, the Huguenots, and Cheshire vs Hampshire.
Shoscombe Old Place
Another horse racing mystery! But there’s a baby Jude Law, some beautiful egg cozies, and yes – a man taking advantage of his sister’s fortune. And a disguise! It’s Gothic mystery at its best here.
The Boscombe Valley Mystery
Australians – and baby James Purefoy! We love this show because it introduces us to the nascence of our favorite actors.
A man is lying dead by a lakeside. A gamekeeper talks too much. Star-crossed would-be lovers – and a forgotten past. It’s too good, too delightfully grotesque.
The Illustrious Client
A wife-murder in the Alps – apparently, it’s called uxoricide. No wonder it hasn’t caught on. Followed by a porcelain collection, and a collection of…women.
Come for Sherlock Holmes, stay for Laura’s interaction with Gene Simmons from KISS, who also has a collection of women.
The Creeping Man
Monkey glands! A more-than-midlife crisis! And the horrors of animal trafficking, which still continues today. The greatest primate actor of all time (Peter Elliott), and the immortal words: “If inconvenient, come all the same.” Holmes and Watson aim to rescue more than one young woman from the fragility of the male ego.
The Master Blackmailer
We’re dividing this episode in two because it was a TV movie. A seminal encounter between Holmes and Charles Augustus Milverton – played to perfection by Robert Hardy.
The Master Blackmailer: Part Deux
Robert Hardy continues with his oleaginous portrayal of Charles Augustus Milverton – and meets his end, deservedly. This is not a spoiler.
Good Night, Mr. Holmes 