The Hound of the Baskervilles (1988)
IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 45 minutes, rated 8.0 by 4727 cinematizens.
Genre: Sherlockiana.
Verdict: Inert.
The Granada Television production of the Holmes Cannon from 1984 to 1996 was heralded as complete and faithful to the originals in forty-one instalments. (It was thus not complete with seventeen remaining.) It is certainly true in this case that the screenplay seems to follow the text with few cinematographic additions. Conan Doyle may have been honoured by such fidelity, but as a viewer he would have noticed how mechanical is the result. While on paper the reader suspends disbelief and there is movement in the narrative, on the screen it seems episodic, or worse, a sequence of still-lifes to display the period furnishing and costumes and not much else. N.B. that the story was written in episodes as a serial and it shows in this production.
None of the supporting characters are developed though the ingenue performance of Dr Mortimer with his dog is good it seems out of place. How could that young man had not have noticed Miss Stapleton until the heir came on the scene. Moreover, he does not capitalise on the great line about the footprint for the Sherlockians. It comes out nearly as an afterthought. I blame the director for that, not the actor. And how is it that this pet dog offers no clue to the hound?
Neither Miss Stapleton nor her sinister brother/husband gets much chance to perform. She looks confused most of the time and I guess that is in character but it got to be monotonous and he looks perplexed, not the mercurial charmer he can be made.
Likewise, the blustering litigator is a cipher despite the actor’s bellowing, though the role of his daughter is restored to its rightful place in the story. (She is usually omitted.)
But most of all, THE MOOR is rendered null and void. What the camera could do with it is left out in favour of the text, and that is a great shame. The 2002 version with Richard Roxborough in the lead does a superb job of making THE MOOR the dominant character in events, even more than the Hound.
Edward Hardwicke offers Dr John Watson as a mature, capable albeit literal-minded man who warms himself in the reflected glory of Holmes. While Jeremy Brett as Holmes was wonderful in the first episodes in this series. British born and bred, yet he was a new face to Brit telly, having lived and worked in Canada and the USA, and he obviously relished playing one of the most enduring British icons, but here he seems off-colour, though perhaps I am biased by knowing the hell he went through in his private life about this time. Ghouls may read about that trial on their own time. His career (and his life) drew to a close shortly after this interrupted and incomplete series ended.
Viewers at the time might have just seen a version of The Hound from 1983 with Ian Richardson in the lead. Stay tuned for my trenchant comments on that in due course.