To be clear, this is only going to be a recap of the 1954 series that Towers produced - I won't be referencing any of the many BBC adaptations, nor the long radio runs of NBC's Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1930-1936), or the best-remembered version, NBC/Mutual's New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which initially starred Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce (1939-1950). Maybe I'll visit them in a future Radio Recap, but it would take a lot of research on my part.
Towers' the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes starred two big name actors in the lead roles - John Gielgud as Holmes and Ralph Richardson as Watson. Gielgud was in something of a slump; he was homosexual, and had been caught cruising for sex, which was a crime; he avoided prison, but his career slumped to a standstill, which naturally led him to Harry Alan Towers, who always had work for slumming professionals.
I find Gielgud is all right as Holmes, but he comes off as more austere than cerebral. A bigger problem is Ralph Richardson - as Watson, he had to narrate every episode and his delivery was a bit muddy. He'd drop his voice and mumble at times-- and not for dramatic effect.
Like most of Towers' programs, the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes has a small library of musical cues that it uses all the time; there's also scarcely any sound effects (other than a stock noise of hoofbeats on cobblestones that's used in the intro and at times to set a scene). The music is primarily a short piece of violin; sometimes it's introduced as what Holmes is supposedly playing at the time.
What the series had going for it was that it adapted the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories - there were no original scripts, unlike the New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I've definitely found these adaptations to be effective; I can vividly recall the first time I heard the productions of "the Case of the Six Napoleons" and "the Dying Detective," which led to my own fascination with Doyle's short stories and novels. And as an Orson Welles fan, I do appreciate his turn as Professor Moriarty in "the Final Problem."
However, as much as I like Doyle's writing, I'm not certain that these are the best adaptations of his work. The first episode of the series is just terrible. Titled, "Dr. Watson Meets Sherlock Holmes," it begins as an adaptation of Doyle's short story, "the Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" but just before it reaches the climax, Watson shifts the narrative to describe how he and Holmes first met (as related in the novel "A Study in Scarlet"), then returns to the climax of the case. There is no good reason for this shift; if the episode had opened with Holmes and Watson's first meeting, the script would have been much improved. As is, it's so bad that if you try listening to the series in order, you might want to give up right then and there; but if you're willing to persevere, I do think this is a good Sherlock Holmes program, even if it's not the best.
You can hear every episode of Towers' the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in this YouTube playlist created by a fan.
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