Rediscovering Sherlock Holmes

Hey, I found the old Granada Serlock Holmes series with Jeremy Brett on youtube! I don't know if there are all of them there but there are a lot of them.I used to love it when I was watching it back in the 80s, it made me discover the work of Arthur Conan Doyle. Jeremy Brett is magnificent as Holmes, but what I always loved about it is the way they have reproduce Victorian England: you genuinly feel there. It is sober and devoid of the clichés that usually plague period pieces in general and adaptations of Sherlock Holmes in particular. Brett as Holmes seldom wears the deerstalker hat and never does it in London (where it would have been a social faux pas), he does not only smoke pipe but also cigarets and cigars and is a drug user, as he was conceived by Doyle. Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes is free from the false perceptions we usually have of the character and is in many aspects Doyle's character made flesh. Always a pleasure to rediscover the master.

Holmes has an interesting entry in the thrillingdetective website. Was he a private eye, was he hardboiled, or not? They answer no, but I am not so sure about it. I would say that in some of his stories he came quite close, but it is true that he might have been too much of an intellectual.