Doing a bit of browsing last night, I discovered that someone has uploaded the Tom Baker Sherlock Holmes adventure, The Hound of The Baskervilles, to YouTube. I’ve wanted to see Tom Baker’s take on the role for many years, so I’ve downloaded them to watch. Although the primary note of this production is that it features Tom Baker, not long after his legendary role, I’m going to try and review it as impartially as I can.
The adventure is set over four half-hour episodes, and each episode has been uploaded in 9-10 minute slices. For fellow Doctor Who enthusiasts, Liz Shaw makes an appearance in the adventure, too.
The adventure is a simple retelling of The Hound of The Baskervilles which offers nothing new to anyone who knows the story or who has seen any other faithful retelling of the story. All that sets it apart from any other version is the actors involved and the production values.
This is a BBC production from the early 80s, and the production values demonstrate this only too clearly. Visually, it’s akin to other BBC productions from around the same time – in other words, not a million miles away from the Peter Cushing series of 15 years earlier. But the production is competent enough with sufficient OB recording to get a good sense of being set on Dartmoor (the earlier Peter Cushing version suffered from minimal OB recording, if any at all).
The episodes were produced by Barry Letts and script edited by Terence Dicks – although one wonders precisely what needed to be script edited on something so familiar (a little more thought into the progress of time in the middle of the story wouldn’t have gone amiss).
On the acting side, the best that can be said is “competent”. Everyone convinces in their roles, but all characters feel a little bland. Terence Rigby gives a solid but unspecial Dr Watson. You can’t help but feel that just about all of the characters have been played better by others in other productions.
Tom Baker reigns in what we know is his usual enthusiasm to play a sombre and typical Sherlock Holmes. Without his usual enthusiasm, we’re left with an unspectacular Holmes that does all that’s required but nothing more. Compare his Sherlock Holmes here to his much superior “Holmes-rehearsal” in The Talons of Weng-Chiang, and you can’t help but feel that he’s being reigned-in just a little too much. I’d like to have seen a little of the flair we got from Jeremy Brett, or the commanding screen presence through subtlety that came so easily to Ian Richardson.
The Hound of The Baskervilles is not the best adventure to begin one’s Sherlock Holmes series, given that Holmes is absent for half the duration and there’s very little detective work going on, so it’s perhaps too little on which to judge what kind of Sherlock Holmes Tom Baker would have made. If only he’d done at least one more episodic adventure, we may have gleaned more from his interpretation of the role.
Compare this to the lavish Ian Richardson version made the following year and there’s no doubt which is the better version. In just about every way conceivable, the Ian Richardson version straddles high over the Tom Baker version. However, that version doesn’t have Tom Baker and, if you like Tom Baker then you won’t be in the least bit disappointed by spending the best part of two hours in his presence for this version of The Hound of The Baskervilles, safe in the knowledge that the story hasn’t been tampered with too much.
In short, it’s nowhere near the best version of The Hound of The Baskervilles committed to Film/TV but it’s a long way from being the worst, too. I couldn’t honestly recommend it unless you’re either a Sherlock Holmes completest or a fan of Tom Baker but, in either of those two cases, you’ll probably enjoy it a lot.