Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6870 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-03-21
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 90 minutes

Synopsis
Sherlock Holmes is called in to investigate a series of murders. The victims are all young girls from wealthy families who have been abducted from their homes. The victims are found dressed in the clothes of the previous victim. Holmes must discover the name of the first victim if he is to solve the case.

Customer Reviews

A fine new adventure for Holmes.
Before BBC1 aired this new Sherlock Holmes adventure around Christmas 2004, I was a little apprehensive.

The programme's writer, Allan Cubitt, had done a cracking adaptation of Conan Doyle's novel The Hound of the Baskervilles in 2002 directed by David Attwood and starring Richard Roxburgh as Holmes and Ian Hart as Watson. While Roxburgh had his detractors (although I thought he gave a great, coldly cerebral performance) praise for Hart was unanimous, the script and actor taking an approach that emphasised Watson's adaptability, strength of character and military service in Afghanistan rather more than other adaptations. Cubitt also teased out the issues of trust from Conan Doyle's story, giving the relationship between Holmes and Watson an absorbing frisson.

I was hoping for more adaptations, but when the BBC announced that Cubitt was creating a new Holmes story I was curious, but a little disappointed. Upon learning that Roxburgh had been replaced by Rupert Everett, whom I couldn't see working in the role at all, I found my enthusiasm waning.

I shouldn't have been so concerned. Simon Cellan Jones had replaced Attwood at the helm and actually, though the production was a very different experience to The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking was generally highly successful.

Set sometime after the Conan Doyle's stories, the script is lifted out of simple pastiche by the manner in which Cubitt moves the central characters' relationship on. Holmes and Watson are older and while the detective's life has, to some extent, stagnated, the good doctor's has moved on in both professional and personal arenas.

This of course changes when Holmes begins investigating a series of murders, all involving young women with beautiful feet and strangulation via the titular hosiery.

Hart continues to be wonderful as Watson, while Everett makes for a very captivating and atypical Holmes - while the flashes of intellectual brilliance are still there, his Holmes is somewhat more vulnerable and out-of-place or even out-of-time than the character is presented by Conan Doyle.

While perhaps a more modern mystery than some of the much-loved short stories and novels, The Case of the Silk Stocking is nonetheless an exceedingly satisfying mystery. This modernity is excused to an extent by the tale being situated after the Conan Doyle canon and when it works the best it is precisely because the dynamic between the two leads has moved on.

The creators of this tale have taken the legacy of Holmes seriously and have come up with a very worthy and, more importantly, fantastically exciting tale. Although I miss Roxburgh (and nobody in moving image versions of the character stands up to Jeremy Brett) I'd be thrilled to see much more of Everett in the role.

Disappointing
I was really looking forward to this Sherlock Holmes production after the Hound of the Baskervilles was so finely adapted and characterised. Ian Hart returning as Watson was one very good sign, and with Rupert Everett interestingly cast as Sherlock Holmes in a newly written mystery it had amazing potential to be both an excellent but also refreshing take on Arthur Conan Doyle's characters, just as the Hound of the Baskervilles was. If only the writing had lived up to that promise.

Certainly, the production was stylish and efficient. Rupert Everett's Sherlock was different from Conan Doyle's, but at first this came across more as a different interpretation rather than the shoddy characterisation that became apparent later on. Despite a few irksome character moments, this was quite a handsome and intriguing Holmes, but really. Taking cocaine in the middle of a case, when a life could be at stake? That's not Sherlock Holmes by any stretch of the imagination. Character gripes aside though (and of those I have none with Watson, who was delightful) it was the new case itself that was the greatest let down. It just screamed trashy American crime show. Sherlock Holmes: SVU. Plotless titillation as opposed to a mystery that should have been a challenge Holmes' vast mental capacities - isn't it that element of his personality, coupled with his equally large flaws, the reason why his character still fascinates us after over a century?

Instead, this story was simplistic, predictable, and not quite long enough to last the show's time span. And the twist at the end, on which it seemed hinged the lasting interest and credibility of the show as a whole, was an obvious, almost crude cliché - one that imploded any chances Silk Stocking has of surpassing, or even matching the last adaptation. To make Holmes' intellect to conform to such a weak storyline was ridiculous to the point where it seemed insulting to the original work.

An improvement over the same team's Hound of the Baskervilles, but Everett is no Holmes
After the crashing disappointment of the BBC's recent version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, the producers have taken a positive step in replacing the truly dreadful Richard Roxburgh as Holmes. Unfortunately, Rupert Everett is only a mild improvement. Less of a crashing ham than Roxburgh, instead he comes across as a rather narcissistic and disinterested confirmed bachelor rather than a master detective, constantly striking brooding poses but never once convincing that there's either a human being or a brilliant deductive machine beneath them. Always an extremely limited actor, he brings little to the part beyond a reminder of how desperately uninteresting an actor he is when given centre-stage.

Thankfully, Ian Hart's Watson has been retained and improved, and he's given a much better part than the moody, petulant and antagonistic reading in Hound. Similarly, the ill-advised mutual distrust and barely submerged hatred grafted onto Holmes and Watson has been dropped in favour of a relationship more akin to the cut 'Case of the Upside Down Room' section of Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, with Watson trying to save his friend from his drug addiction by interesting him in a baffling case (unfortunately they have also carried over Robert Stephens' horrendous white-as-a-corpse makeup job for Sherlock).

The case itself isn't overburdened with originality, at times playing like a more refined Dario Argento giallo without the gore, but it moves along at a decent pace and makes for an entertaining if undemanding 99 minutes despite an abundance of anachronisms. It's just a shame that once again they've come up short one Sherlock.