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Over the course of many television and movie versions, one factor occurs again and again: a good Holmes needs an equally good Watson by his side. No matter what the individual qualities of the actors involved, if they don’t gel on screen as the consulting detective and the former military doctor, they are likely to be forgotten in the annals of great Holmes/Watson pairings.
The first iconic partnership to hit celluloid was that of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, who played the sharp featured, sharp witted detective and the plump, bumbling doctor in fourteen films between 1939 and 1946, starting with The Hound of the Baskervilles. After the first two films, Rathbone’s Holmes was quickly transplanted from the Victorian era to contemporary London to fight the Nazis. This ‘bringing Holmes forward in time’ idea would be used again a number of times, usually, but not always, unsuccessfully.
Another successful Holmes and Watson duo was Peter Cushing and Nigel Stock, who brought the Baker Street flatmates to the BBC in the 1960s. Cushing had played the role before in 1959 in The Hound of the Baskervilles, with Andre Morrell on sidekick duty that time. Cushing would return to the role once more in 1984’s The Masks of Death, this time ably supported by Sir John Mills.
As I said at the top, some partnerships just didn’t work because, despite employing very good actors, the chemistry of the Holmes/Watson team just wasn’t there. Who recalls the Roger Moore and Patrick Macnee movie Sherlock Holmes in New York? Or Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley playing it for laughs in Without A Clue? And if you do remember the latter, maybe the Peter Cook/Dudley Moore version of The Hound of the Baskervilles was to your taste?
The late 80s saw what many people still consider to be the definitive Holmes in the form of Jeremy Brett, whose edgy portrayal still brings plaudits today via ITV3 repeats of the classic Granada series. The company even built a Baker Street set not far from its Coronation Street cobbles in Manchester.
Brett’s Holmes, like Cushing before him, had more than one Watson through his run of more than forty adventures. He was first assisted by David Burke, who made a competent but occasionally slightly dense foil. Watson, as written by Conan Doyle, was never the bumbling figure initially performed by Nigel Stock in the 1940s, who many later actors took their cues from. When Burke left after two series, Edward Hardwicke stepped up and the partnership was complete. Brett and Hardwicke played off each other brilliantly and managed to capture the essence of the original Holmes and Watson novels and short stories with ease. But for the untimely death of Brett in 1995, they would surely have gone on to complete all of Conan Doyle sixty Holmes stories.
The BBC had the next significant attempt at Holmes in 2004, with an original tale, The Case of the Silk Stocking. This starred Rupert Everett and Ian Hart as the heroes, and was followed by the seemingly obligatory version of The Hound of the Baskervilles a couple of years later. But this pairing didn’t take off in the way the corporation hoped and no more have been made.
Which brings me neatly to the Sherlock Holmes movie of 2009, with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law taking the starring roles under the direction of Guy Ritchie. And they make a very professional pairing of sleuth and doctor, looking comfortable both in their respective roles and in each other’s company throughout the movie.
So we come to the new BBC version, created by the fertile minds of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. They have brought Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Watson (Martin Freeman) into the London of 2010, with CSI-style forensics, texting and the Internet. And it works extremely well, no doubt in part down to the pairing of Cumberbatch and Freeman. The former has definitely inherited the edginess of Brett’s Holmes, while Freeman gives us an understated, but never under-rated, Watson.
For me at least, Brett and Hardwicke are still the kings of the Holmes/Watson double-acts. However, Cumberbatch and Freeman, with more cracking episodes of Sherlock in the pipeline, could just pinch their crowns.
House and Wilson?
@previous commenter: mind = blown. Holmes = 'homes' = House, Dr. James Wilson = Dr. John Watson, House is shot by a Jack (John) Moriarty in Season 2, recreational drug use but not on the case, psychological reasoning...
This has been a damn good series of Sherlock, and I can't wait for the next (hopefully with more episodes in it, and with more of them written by the genius Moffat). I think Brett and Cumberbatch can be thought of as two different versions of the same character almost: like Smith and Tennant's Doctors, or Craig and Connery's Bonds - there's no way to directly compare them and say that one's better, as in some ways their character is the same person and in other ways they're absolutely not. Both are truly excellent.
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