Red-Headed League
Mar. 12th, 2005 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prof_pangaeaRed-Headed League... ah...
Watson has an absolutely beautiful monologue about half-way through the episode, when he and Holmes go to the Sarasate concert. It starts off with the actual text from the story (already good) and then branches off to musings about Holmes' character... Michael Williams' delivery, his voice, his kindness... gah.
"Once in St. James' Hall my friend became a different man. A very capable performer himself, and composer of no ordinary merit, all afternoon he sat in the stalls, wrapped in the most perfect happiness, weaving his long, thin fingers in time to the music. His gentle smiling face, and languid, dreamy eyes, as unlike those of Holmes the sleuth-hound, Holmes the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent as it was possible to conceive. I have often thought that he was possessed of a dual nature in his singular character, one of those conditions now beginning tentatively to intrude into the medical journals. I had mentioned as much to my wife; she however, had a far more down-right opinion of Holmes' moods. For myself, I felt his extreme exactness, and astuteness in detection represented a reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood occasions such as the present brought to the fore, and that the swing of his nature would shortly take him from extreme langour to devouring energy, promising an evil time for those he had set himself up to hunt down."
"And with that, Holmes vanished into the crowd as if he had never been. For my part, I made my way home to Kensington and my wife. Mary, bless her, had rightly guessed where I had been, and with whom, yet chid me no more than to acccuse me of marrying her under the false pretense that while all the world believed she had my heart, in reality it belonged to Holmes."
And the end scene...
Watson has an absolutely beautiful monologue about half-way through the episode, when he and Holmes go to the Sarasate concert. It starts off with the actual text from the story (already good) and then branches off to musings about Holmes' character... Michael Williams' delivery, his voice, his kindness... gah.
"Once in St. James' Hall my friend became a different man. A very capable performer himself, and composer of no ordinary merit, all afternoon he sat in the stalls, wrapped in the most perfect happiness, weaving his long, thin fingers in time to the music. His gentle smiling face, and languid, dreamy eyes, as unlike those of Holmes the sleuth-hound, Holmes the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent as it was possible to conceive. I have often thought that he was possessed of a dual nature in his singular character, one of those conditions now beginning tentatively to intrude into the medical journals. I had mentioned as much to my wife; she however, had a far more down-right opinion of Holmes' moods. For myself, I felt his extreme exactness, and astuteness in detection represented a reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood occasions such as the present brought to the fore, and that the swing of his nature would shortly take him from extreme langour to devouring energy, promising an evil time for those he had set himself up to hunt down."
"And with that, Holmes vanished into the crowd as if he had never been. For my part, I made my way home to Kensington and my wife. Mary, bless her, had rightly guessed where I had been, and with whom, yet chid me no more than to acccuse me of marrying her under the false pretense that while all the world believed she had my heart, in reality it belonged to Holmes."
And the end scene...
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no subject
Date: 2005-03-12 10:18 pm (UTC)Do you ever wonder how others can read this and NOT see? I do.
And no, whatever one might care to believe about Mary, I cannot believe that she was stupid.
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Date: 2005-03-17 10:29 pm (UTC)And as for Mary, neither do I.
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Date: 2005-03-17 10:43 pm (UTC)They've got a bunch of message boards up at their website, including one devoted to Holmes (yay), and many very cool interesting people post there (including Bert Coules), and in general I find the atmosphere there far more interesting and welcoming that The Hounds of the Internet (which I used to read regularly, and now peruse occasionally). Anywho, there is a thread there called "Was Sherlock Holmes Straight?", which is fantastic reading, in my opinion. Hasn't been updated in a while, but I was looking at it the other day, and I thought you might enjoy it.
http://p098.ezboard.com/fscarletstreetsherlockholmes.showMessage?topicID=3.topic
no subject
Date: 2005-03-14 07:32 pm (UTC)Concomitently, Michael Williams is THE John Watson.
'Nuff said.
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Date: 2005-03-17 10:25 pm (UTC)But I think the BBC has closer to 60. How Coules and Co. ever decided upon Merrison and Williams I do not know, but I shall be eternally grateful.
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Date: 2005-03-17 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-18 03:33 pm (UTC)The Further Adventures are amazingly good as well -- there are two volumes, with five episodes each. Each story is a pastiche that Coules based on a reference to an unwritten adventure that Watson referred to in another story (like "the most winning woman I ever knew poisoned her three children for the insurance money"). Andrew Sachs plays Watson, as Michael Williams unfortunately died shortly before the recording of the first set.
Er, of course, you may know all this already. But just in case you hadn't. They are brilliant.