Sherlock Holmes Returns is one of those stories in which Holmes manages to bring himself into the modern age, without requiring any of the “reboot/reimaging” that tends to happen today.
This wasn’t the first time this had happened. Just six years earlier, the TVM entitled The Return of Sherlock Holmes sees Sherlock Holmes being brought back to life by Jane Watson, a descendant of Dr Watson, after having been cryogenically frozen for eighty years. It starred Michael Pennington as Holmes, and featured luminaries such as Barry Morse. I haven’t seen that version, so I won’t be doing any comparisons here. The general buzz, though, is that the 1987 version with Pennington is the better one.
Sherlock Holmes Returns begins with Sherlock Holmes being brought back to life after having been cryogenically frozen for eight-four years (have I just written that?). That’s where Holmes’ story begins, but not where this story begins. In San Francisco, Dr Amy Winslow is confused by a recent patient, an ex-cop, that’s been mauled in the city by a tiger – a tiger that appeared, and then disappeared, without anyone apparently noticing. She’s invited to a house by widow Mrs Hudson, who’s grateful to Dr Winslow for helping her late husband through a heart attack. Mrs Hudson spins a strange tale about the house from back in 1899, one that she is compelled by legal agreement, to keep up until the year 2000. Financial difficulties make this impossible, and so she’s offering Dr Winslow first refusal to buy the house to help out. Winslow can’t afford to do this.
While accepting dinner at the house, Dr Winslow triggers a secret panel in the wine cellar and uncovers a cryogenic coffin which activates when the electricity is interrupted. Out staggers a man with old clothes, long hair, and even longer fingernails. After helping this bizarre person overcome the shock of recovery, Winslow watches as the man crawls around the cellar while telling her that he is Sherlock Holmes. Shortly after scouring the environment with his magnifying glass, he bewilders both Winslow and Hudson by reconstructing a break-in from 45 years earlier in which a man was killed and a boy escaped with Holmes’ only personal possessions – a tin containing documentary proof of his identity, and several gemstones that he intended to use to set himself up when he came out of cryo.
Concerned about the loss of his tin, Holmes continues to try and convince Dr Winslow of his sincerity while taking in the bizarre surroundings of the late 20th Century. Winslow is not easily swayed by his story and, when Holmes deduces much about her from her house, she throws him out into the street – believing that he’s some practical joke set on her by her ex-boyfriend.
Espying a headline about the tiger attack, Holmes sees a television report about a man being killed in a tankful of piranha fish. The police don’t connect the two deaths, but Holmes immediately does. Later, when someone else is killed by having a load of exotic beetles dumped on him, and someone else is killed by exotic snake venom, Holmes knows that all four deaths are connected.
On the trail of his missing tin, Holmes is given a letter from Mrs Hudson, dated 1899. It’s from his brother Mycroft, but it reached him too late. In a simple code, it tells Holmes that the son of Moriarty is on his trail. From this, Holmes deduces that the two men who ransacked the cellar 45 years earlier were two descendants of Moriarty – the boy (Moriarty’s grandson) would still be alive today.
As the adventure progresses, Holmes unravels a mystery in which two crime lords intend to go into partnership in order to “bring San Francisco to its knees!”. With the help of a new “irregular”, a young electronics expert who knows the streets, Holmes and Winslow foil the dastardly deeds of the current James Moriarty.
Sherlock Holmes was written, directed, and executive produced by Kenneth Johnson (he of V, Alien Nation, and The Incredible Hulk fame), and you can tell in many ways. If you enjoy Alien Nation, then you’ll recognise much of the production of Sherlock Holmes Returns. There are several moments in which Sherlock is “typically Sherlock” – reeling off a near endless list of deductions made within seconds of entering a room, for example. Being out of his time, he’s not 100% correct about everything – something that’s added for light relief, no doubt.
Anthony Higgins is an acceptable Holmes who does his best to keep the “out of his era” character fixed in period, while remaining suitably bewildered by the trappings of modern times without taking it to annoying extremes. He plays an accessible Holmes that I would say is most similar to the Ronald Howard version of the 50s in that he’s only arrogant when streaming off a long list of deductions, and not all the time as the typical Holmes tends to be.
Reasons are given for the original cryogenic freezing – that being that, by 1899 and following the death of Professor Moriarty, Holmes had pretty much dealt with all crime of the 19th Century and so he looked towards the 21st. An explanation is given to how the cryogenic unit works and, with the appropriate dose of suspension of disbelief, nothing here is objectionable.
There’s even some clever wordplay in which Holmes explains that his cases were written up by Dr Watson and then turned into stories by some chap call Conan Doyle. (Although this Conan Doyle was apparently Irish!)
Debrah Farentino plays Dr Amy Winslow (occasionally called “Watson” by Holmes as a slip), in a pleasing and unobjectionable way. The character is there to correct Holmes’ preconceptions about the new world, and to correct his misconceptions about some clues that lead to erroneous deductions, and is also there to be … well, Dr Watson. She learns from watching Holmes, she narrates parts of the story (as Watson did), and there’s the potential glimmer of romantic interest (I say “glimmer” because it’s made clear that Holmes isn’t interested).
The new James Moriarty doesn’t appear until late on in the adventure. Played by Ken Pogue, the character doesn’t much appear to be the typical Moriarty that other writers tend to create – rather we know of his skills of deception by reputation (which makes it a little odd that he’s on hand for the denouement, but we can’t have everything).
Oh, and for modern “Sherlock” viewers, there’s even a modernist “gay” gag. When he first faces Holmes, Moriarty says that he believed there was no offspring. “My grandfather thought he was gay.” To which Holmes responds – “Indeed I am. Never gayer than when confronting a sinister genius!” A nice reminder of what the word used to mean.
Sherlock Holmes Returns was a pilot for a TV series that, sadly, was never commissioned. I say “sadly”, because this TVM is family-friendly entertainment. While the character of Holmes is taken as seriously as to respect the Conan Doyle creation, the whole production is kept light-hearted enough to make it entertaining. All deductions and conclusions are based on clues that are apparent, except for the case of the “10 second deductions on entering a room” scenes (because we just can’t see that much from a camera shot), but those ones don’t contribute to the plot anyway so they’re just a bit of fun.
If you’re not looking for a retelling of the original Conan Doyle stories, or for further stories featuring the same characters, and you’d just like to see a fresh new take on a recognisable Sherlock Holmes, then you will find something in Sherlock Holmes returns to enjoy. I certainly found it infinitely more entertaining than anything the BBC have come up with recently. If Sherlock Holmes Returns is to be taken as evidence of what the US can do with the character then I, for one, feel that any new series they’re currently planning to make can only be a very good thing indeed.