User Reviews

Stage, screen, and television adaptations or features using Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's characters turn on one simple, inescapable point: do we believe the actor as Holmes? If the answer is yes, then a bad story is still pretty good. If the answer is no, then whatever other attractions the story holds are worthless.

The answer here is clearly yes: Rupert Everett is very good as Sherlock Holmes. The transfer from print to screen is almost flawless. If anything, too much is made of Holmes' obvious flaws as a human being: his recreational drug use, patronizing arrogance, indifference to the feelings of others, preoccupation with the workings of his own mind. This Holmes reminds me of Dorian Gray. It is only his love of solving crimes that keeps him from committing them.

The story is pretty pedestrian. This isn't quite as bad as "the butler did it," but it's close. I won't spoil the movie as others here have by saying more. I liked the scenes where Holmes is reasoning out who the killer is. This was clever, unforeseen, and quite believable. But, from the time the chief suspect is identified, until he was finally caught .. the entire climax of the movie, in other words .. was ..well, trite, clichéd, and elementary, my dear Watson ..

Kudos to Helen McCrory and Perdita Weeks in supporting performances.

Rupert Everett has the aquiline profile and world-weary vocal delivery that are necessities for a screen Holmes, but he (and the excellent actors around him) are hamstrung by a cliché- ridden script. Sherlock Holmes, telling Watson to "keep your breath to cool your porridge"?? The last two times I heard that expression on screen were both in adaptations of Pride and Prejudice--and I certainly mean no disrespect to either of them. Holmes is also made to deploy a Mary Poppins aphorism about pie crusts and promises--perhaps you remember it from your childhood Disney viewing.

This is a good-looking production (apart from the occasional wobble from the annoyingly popular unsteadicam), though I have it on good authority that London fog did not swirl rapidly around the lampposts and chimneypots. Beautifully designed interiors include a Duchess' drawing room, a Victorian graveyard, an underground lair of the villain (he always has a lair, doesn't he), and a ceramic-tiled morgue. Costumes are in a muted color palette of cream, black, olive green, and brown, and the girls in their costumes for a classical tableau look as if they have stepped out of a Alma-Tadema painting.

In addition to Everett as Holmes, the production is graced with a uniformly strong cast. Ian Hart brings an acerbic vigor to the role of Dr. Watson, and Neil Dudgeon injects Lestrade with some humor. The superb Helen McCrory, as Watson's American fiancée, initially appears brash and pushy (she calls Holmes "Sherlock" throughout, even though his best friend Watson invariably calls him by his last name), an often-observed trait of American women in British film/TV productions, but she is too good an actress to keep to that one-note character. Guy Henry is disgracefully underused--give him a bigger role!

The story is a new one, which is not in itself a criticism; it is creepy and intriguing. The most glaring problem of the show is with the script; I hope that director Simon Cellan Jones continues to make more Holmes stories--but that writer Allan Cubitt will not.

Rupert Everett's replacement of Richard Roxburgh for a second post-Jeremy Brett installment of big budget Holmes adaptation is quite a wise one, adding as it does a touch of youthful energy to the detective's armoury. Indeed, the whole film runs at a cracking pace, dropping clues like confetti. But what really makes this adaptation shine is a growing sense of purpose in terms of atmosphere. Arthur Conan Doyle's creation is plunged further into its roots as a purveyor of the grotesque and shocking. Corpses, evil smiles (and that's just Ian Hart's Watson!), drug use, great music score, and plenty of dense smog enhance the proceedings further than the decent acting or script. Well worth a look on a dark night...

The character of English writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes is probably one of the most popular invented detective. He is very calm and has very cool attitude when he's trying to solve a murder. This movie will help you to like even more this brilliant detective. It's mostly because of the actor Rupert Everett who is very good in this roll. Also I have to say something about script. It's not the best that it can be, but it's good, because you cannot understand who is the murder till' the end. This movie takes place in London, where someone is killing young ladies from rich families. This case is been given to the best detective on the world,Sherlock Holmes. He has help from his friend Dr.Watson and from Watson's fiancée Mrs.Vandeleur. This movie is good because of the actors and script. Again I have to mention Rupert Everett who proved that he is very good actor. Also Ian Hart played well as Watson. Please look this movie with patience and watch a good performance from a fine actor.

It seemed that prior to the Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock franchise, The BBC tried its best at producing something different. The Hound of the Baskervilles several years earlier had been very good, this one seemed rather exciting. A really exciting premise, an original story, Rupert Everett, Michael Fassbender, Helen McCrory, and the return of the excellent Ian Hart as Watson.

I like everything, bar the story, it's pretty poor unfortunately, it's like they didn't have the best script, so opted for shocks and fairly graphic scenes, sadly it just doesn't work, which is a shame, because all the elements I mentioned earlier are so good, Rupert Evans is absolutely dazzling as Holmes, I loved him in the role, superior to Richard Roxburgh who'd previously played him, in almost every department. He's intelligent, harsh, calculating, and a little uneasy, talk about fitting the bill.

Such a shame the script, and poor ending let down what is a classy production, excellent music, gorgeous costumes, clearly money was spent on it, a shame it just doesn't quite work.

6/10 (Most of that is for the brilliance of Everett.)

I really liked that movie. The way Sherlock Holmes is portrayed here strongly reminds me of the 2010 TV show, called Sherlock (which is really great). In contrast to every other Sherlock movie I've watched before, this one resembles the 2010 Sherlock the best and I really like that version of him.

I gotta disagree completely with 'mgmax' of Chicago.

I watched it on TV very recently. This was the 2nd time it has been shown on the ABC (In Australia). I recommended it to everyone I know- sounds cheesy I said, but it's worth watching. Why? For Rupert Everett, that's why.

This movie is all about Rupert Everett. Forget all that stuff about the plot- this is Sherlock Holmes for Christ's sake!. Everett is simply great as Holmes.

The film has got some great one-liners, some are quoted on the website.

Sit back and enjoy the best Holmes ever.

This one goes into Holmes' drug taking as well.

We don't see enough of Rupert Everett. I just watched the Comfort of Strangers- now that's got a thin plot.

As a big Sherlock Holmes fan, I was looking forward to "Silk Stocking," but was very disappointed with Rupert Everett's performance. He gave the distinct impression of being bored all the way through. Also, I was surprised by the scene of him shooting up during the case. My understanding of the "real" Holmes is that he was bored in between cases, and that's when he enjoyed his 7% solution. When in the midst of a case, he was excited and engaged and focused -- none of which Everett showed in his performance. My favorite Holmes remains Jeremy Brett, who showed actual modulation in Holmes' personality (irritation and boredom before the case presented itself; excitement, sometimes to a bizarre extent, during a case; rapture at listening to a classical concert etc.) rather than the sleepy, Johnny-one-note performance of Everett. Four snores.

It's kind of a tradition: Sherlock Holmes at Christmas on the BBC. Two years ago I watched The hound of the Baskervilles which was an excellent episode. This year a new episode with a different kind of Holmes. A Holmes I liked. He wasn't just a character from a book, no he was as real as he can be. Everett does a great job, and Ian Hart as dr. Watson makes sure we can laugh at times.

About the story: after a bit of a slow start it became very suspenseful. Even though I think the fog idea could have been used better. There is only one exciting scene where the fog creates a kind of spooky atmosphere.

The BBC has not ruled out the possibility of further Sherlock Holmes films in the future. So I read from a press release on their website. This is good news!

As a long-time Holmes fan, and particularly of the Jeremy Brett interpretations, I was fully prepared to dislike this one intensely. However, I did enjoy it and can recommend it, though with some warnings.

As several have mentioned, the time warp is annoying for those who know the genre. While it's certainly possible that Holmes might have "come out of retirement" at a young age, this is pushing it a bit far. Holmes and Watson were at least in their mid- to late twenties in the 1880s, so an Edwardian (1903?) setting would have them each pushing 50.

I don't recall seeing this Everett guy before, but I think they could have done better. However, after seeing poor Charlton Heston doing Holmes, I won't squawk too loudly. Everett seems to play up the jaded, effeminate Edwardian dandy routine a bit much for me.

Aside from the earlier-mentioned telephone disparity and perhaps too-routine use of fingerprints, I was particularly aggravated by the reference at the end to James Whistler's famous work commonly known as "Whistler's Mother. Holmes refers to it as something like "Portrait in Gray," whereas the actual title is "Arrangement in Gray and Black (or Black and Gray)". If as screenwriter is determined to be that pretentious, he should at least do the research and get it right.

The plot seemed to be "cheating" a bit to me, too, as others have mentioned.

But I did like it, warts and all. Maybe a 6 or 7 out of 10.

Apart from the names Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, there's really nothing to connect this original BBC TV movie to the original Conan Doyle stories. It's a return to the old wartime Basil Rathbone films, set in the wrong period, packed with anachronistic detail, and which fails to pay even lip service to Holmes's famous method. It's a poorly written modern police drama right down to the obligatory, clunking serial killer plot. It's just dressed in period costume. Even the plot twist about the killer's identity comes in Edwardian dress, as it could only ever possibly fresh and original in disguise pretending to be a story written a hundred years ago.

The story constantly forces modern elements incongruously into Holmes's necessarily, fundamentally low tech world. The story is set some time after the Victorian era of the classic Holmes stories, apparently to justify the use of telephones and modern police techniques like fingerprinting. Watson is about to marry an American psychiatrist, which opens the door to the modern serial killer psychodrama whose emphasis is on woolly sexual motivation and grotesque patterns of behaviour, worlds away from the traditional Holmes story where logic and deduction solve single victim locked room murders. The oddly un-Edwardian London police set up an incongruous, modern incident room to collate the information about their spiralling body count. In one scene Holmes spins around this room staring helplessly at photographs and maps, unable to connect fact and incident, which reduces the finest logical detective mind in the world to the level of "Inspector X" in any paint-by-numbers police series. Eventually Inpector Lestrade himself time-travels to the 1970s to give a suspect an Sweeney-style kicking to make him talk.

Rupert Everett as Holmes drifts through the first half of the story like someone on a mixture of recreational drugs, which is clearly the writer's deliberate intention. Trying to exploit the radical elements in Holmes's character the story inflates his drug use out of proportion. Conan Doyle saddled his creation with a habit of injecting cocaine, but there is never any suggestion that Holmes had a narcotic monkey on his back. He claims his 7 per cent solution stimulates his mind in times of boredom, a world away from the use of soporifics to deaden his brain.

Ironically it seems that in order to make these seasonal specials featuring Holmes himself the BBC abandoned its own excellent Holmes homage, the quite superb Murder Rooms, which succeeded in every respect that this film fails, injecting modern style and sensibilities while still honouring the source material. They were faithful in period detail and in many respects to the type of detective story which suits the Holmes character, and where they took a post-modern approach were able to underscore rather than undermine the quality of the original. It begs the question, as they clearly have access to writers with the talent to produce this kind of work, why didn't they use them here? Even more ironically, in the UK while this film was one of the main planks of the BBC's Christmas 2004 season evening schedule, the BBC have also been showing daytime repeats of Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes. The strength of this performance, and the faithfulness to the original material, casts the poor work here into sharp relief.

Am a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes and get a lot of enjoyment out of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. Also love Basil Rathbone's and especially Jeremy Brett's interpretations to death. So would naturally see any Sherlock Holmes adaptation that comes my way, regardless of its reception.

'Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking' has garnered comparisons with the 2002 version of 2002's 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' with Richard Roxburgh, namely perhaps because of Ian Hart returning as Watson. It is hard to tell which is the better of the two, this has the better Holmes, he has more screen time and doesn't have the flaw of having very bad visual effects. The earlier adaptation though does better with the relationship between Holmes and Watson, didn't feel as clichéd or anachronistic and Richard E Grant's Stapleton eclipses anybody in the supporting cast here.

Neither are among the best Sherlock Holmes adaptations (the Jeremy Brett Granada adaptations are hard to beat as well as the best of Basil Rathbone's films) , though neither are among the worst, like the Peter Cook.'The Hound of the Baskervilles' or any of the Matt Frewer Hallmark films, especially 'The Sign of Four'.

Certainly there are a lot of strengths with 'Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking'. It looks great. There is a real creepiness and authenticity to the settings and production design and the costumes show a careful eye for detail. It's beautifully photographed, the use of fog was at times overused but quite effective. The music is suitably eerie.

Writing intrigues and entertains, with some nice references here and there, while there are some genuinely creepy and suspenseful moments. It is also intriguing for its depiction of the upper class. It's paced in a lively fashion generally while still having some breathing space. Direction is competent enough at some points but low key in others.

Of the acting, the standout is Ian Hart's loyal and intelligent, but also at times light-hearted and feisty, Watson, to me one of the best, most interesting and most faithful interpretations, rather than the buffoon seen in some interpretations (Nigel Bruce being an infamous example). Rupert Everett is a very worthy Holmes, perhaps too young and healthy-looking, but also shrewd, thoughtful and charismatic. The two do show a good chemistry together.

However, the script is not always focused and riddled with clichés that tends to make one groan rather than smile. There are forced in modernisations too that just come over as sloppy and anachronistic. There are moments of tension and suspense here, but would have been made better if there were more suspects (far too few here), if the perpetrator was not revealed or too obvious too early and if the ending explained things better, felt less hasty, has more suspense and less of a vapid, predictable feel and didn't feel as anti-climactic or underdeveloped. The ending really was a slap in the face, and was rounded off by a scene that strived to be poignant but ruined by clumsy writing.

Generally the supporting cast while not terrible are not used to their full potential and are somewhat bland. Neil Dudgeon's interesting Lestrade fares best and Helen McCrory does what she can. The drug use is over-emphasised and out of character and the more strained relationship between Holmes and Watson had far more subtlety in 'The Hound of the Baskervilles', it was veering on the too antagonistic here.

Overall, decent and interesting but a little underwhelming as well. 6/10 Bethany Cox

An original BBC story with Conan Doyle's two main characters Sherlock Holmes (Rupert Everett) and Dr. Watson (Ian Hart), "The Case Of The Silk Stocking" takes place in London in the early 1900s. A young girl of the English aristocracy has been murdered. Some of the story characters are aristocratic and not very likable. Major scenes take place in a high brow, Victorian setting.

The plot is clear enough and there's some genuine suspense. But there are too few suspects. I kept waiting for some strange plot twist; it never came. The story's underlying premise I found disappointing. And the solution to the case is revealed too soon.

Although Holmes presents many of the traits and mannerisms we would expect from Conan Doyle's original character, in this film, as portrayed by Rupert Everett, the character comes across less intellectual as merely haughty and hostile, not unlike the aristocratic characters into whose world he has entered. Except for the charming young females, the entire bundle of characters is too snooty and superior for my preference.

Probably the best element is the editing, which skillfully blends concurrent events in an interesting way and shows character relationships across the entirety of the principal cast. Intermittent background music is nondescript and a bit loud. Costumes and prod design are expertly crafted for a difficult social class and historical era. Color cinematography is indifferent but competent. They went a bit overboard with the fog machine.

Well worth a one-time viewing, "The Case Of The Silk Stocking" strikes me as your typically well-directed but assembly-line-produced murder mystery. The result is a modern update of an iconic fictional detective investigating an original, but none too believable, story; by-the-numbers script; and a well-known but miscast actor in the title role.

Writer Alan Cubitt would go on to create The Fall and another implausible, creepy killer. We get an interesting Holmes & Watson. To be fair more Holmes attitude than analytical demonstrations. All together a solid addition to the many Holmesian creations. If your into it you can find it on YT.

It seems that some people did not like Australian Richard Roxburgh as Holmes so he has been replaced by Rupert Everett.

Ian Hart returns as Dr Watson but he has put on a few pounds since the last movie, something Holmes refers to here.

Allan Cubitt has written an original story. Society girls are being killed in a ritualistic manner by a serial killer. Holmes deduces that the killer is after a certain type of young woman.

Dr Watson's soon to be wife Mrs Vandeleur provides the psychological insights.

Holmes and Watson have prickly relationship and Everett rather overemphasises the drug addiction of Holmes.

It is a Gothic melodramatic mystery with elements of a Jack the Ripper vibe to it as the story is set in the world of the upper classes and the London fog.

An early role for Michael Fassbender as a footman who always seems to be providing his fingerprints.

It is a rather over the top in its finale, although Holmes and Lestrade capture the suspect, they have no prove. Holmes deduces that something else is afoot.

The BBC did not continue any further with this series and rather gave up on Holmes until they bought it back re-imagined as the modern day Sherlock series.

I'll admit, I wasn't expecting too much when this appeared on CBC earlier tonight, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Rupert Everett, while no Jeremy Brett, is a very good Sherlock. The rest of the cast doesn't draw too much attention, but they are very passable.

"Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking" could have benefited slightly from being shortened to 1 and 1/2 hour instead of the apx. 1 hour 40 minutes.

It would have tightened up the loose ends, and helped quite a bit.

The BBC is best at the Holmes stories, and I would love to see another production starring Rupert Everett, who is certainly the best since Jeremy Brett.

A dead young woman is found on the streets and everyone assumes her to be a prostitute. Dr. Watson (Ian Hart) is not so sure and recruits Sherlock Holmes (Rupert Everett). Sherlock had fallen into a rut and estranged from Watson. He immediately discovers that a silk stocking has been stuffed into the girl's throat and she's a high born daughter. Other girls are threatened with the same fate.

This is an original story. It's fine. Quite frankly, it has in common with modern serial killer police TV shows. It's a good place to start Sherlock. I like the actors. The story is fairly simple and compelling enough. The twist is fine although I don't love the ending. All in all, it's an interesting new take on these old characters.

When I heard that they were making a new Sherlock Holmes to be shown at Christmas and that Rupert would be playing the lead, I was quite excited. The trailers looked promising.

Unfortunately, then I watched the program and I was really disappointed.

The story was dull and felt rushed. I was disappointed also with Everett's performance which lacked the spark or energy shown by Jeremy Brett when he played Holmes in the TV series.

Alas I don't think it was anywhere as good as The Hound of The Baskervilles that was on the other year, which had Richard Roxburgh as Holmes; he was much better.

Sherlock Holmes and the case of the silk stocking begins in 1903 with an endless whirl of fog (or is it smog?) engulfing London day after day. This provides the perfect cover for an unknown killer to commits his misdeeds and Holmes is called in to stop him. Unusually for a Sherlock Holmes villain this killer appears to be ritualistic and have a sexual motive for his crimes, something that wasn't really possible to publish at the time A. C Doyle was writing his stories. The fog also acts as a literal metaphor for the mystery surrounding the plot.

The setting of 1903 enables the writers to bring the story a little more up to date, we see Holmes use a telephone in one scene, the old telegraph no longer features in this story. Holmes also places great importance on the use of fingerprinting to catch his killer. Watson's American fiancé is also a woman written to appeal to modern audiences, she gives her husband John orders, insists on first term names, suggests a whisky and Soda for Holmes before adding that she will take one too. In the next scene she's then seen smoking a cigarette while unblushingly discussing sexual perversions in criminal cases. As the story goes on though she disappears and it instead becomes about the boys saving the damsel in distress from the killer.

This story does get more into the psychology and psychological profiling involved in detective work, in the original stories Holmes tended to concentrate more on physical clues and rarely seemed interested in asking why a criminal is a criminal. He would usually refer to the criminal class as one single term which covered every form of crime with the kind of thinking men like Francis Galton freely used at the time. Holmes' brilliance from what I remember was in his minute knowledge of particular subjects such as poisons, the geography of London, bicycle tyres as well as a general ability to make astute logical deductions.

In this story Lestrade is portrayed quite well as a gruff, down to earth detective, he's probably the most human of the characters, he could be dropped right into the 21st century and it wouldn't feel wrong. Sherlock Holmes is portrayed quite faithfully from the original source material, it's probably the adaptation where they've most strongly empathised the sexiness of the character, there's one part where he's dressed in a tuxedo looking a bit like James Bond in the night. Despite his charm and good looks in this he still retains that element of chilliness occasionally surfaces. There's something for the women on the screen with Rupert Evertt looking very suave and cool in each scene and something for the men with the story centred around a group of very young women who spend most of the runtime in revealing outfits for some kind of ancient Greek play they are rehearsing.

The Edwardian period holds a special place in British History, rightly or wrongly it's seen as a golden age in the country's history. The fact that this story focuses on Belgravia and high society in London rather than the slums means that the audience is treated to some rather lavish production design, full of glamorous costumes, elegant furniture in beautiful homes full of artwork and decorations. The nostalgia people have for this time is difficult to over stress, the top hats, steam trains, foggy streets, gas lamps, fireplaces, horse and carriages, grandfather clocks, afternoon tea and an empire the sun never set on.

Another thing this gets right is the relationship between Holmes and Watson, there's a slight element of comedy to it, with Watson getting drawn into doing Holmes bidding when he really should be getting ready for his own wedding. Watson is not just a companion in the story either, like a dog who just follows his master around all day but is of no practical use to a single task when you're honest about it. In this story Watson does a bit of investigating of his own and the information he gathers proves vital, he's also something of the man of action too at the end.

On the negative side there's just a few, I cringed when Holmes says "Elementary my Dear Watson." I was half expecting him to be wearing his deerstalker and smoking his pipe when that line came out. The ending and the revelation is pretty far-fetched and implausible. Lastly the fact that Holmes not once but twice sets a trap that fails and leads to the killer being able to abduct another victim starts to make Holmes look a bit clueless, no pun intended... The abduction too where the killer allows his victim to leave because his ritual has been messed up doesn't really make any sense unless the killer has an exceptionally low IQ which clearly he doesn't. Once the victim has seen the killer's face and could identify him there's no way that the killer can just release the victim, it makes no sense to me.... Also I'm not sure if the writers know or understand just how tightly ingrained social class was back in this time, it asks us to believe that a working-class man is able to socially interact with upper-class ladies, when even a middleclass man wouldn't really have been able to do so. The Pickwick Papers contains a passage written by Dickens of how the Bath footmen liked to secretly pretend that the young ladies they served were in love with them, as the book makes it clear though this can only ever be a fantasy and it rather cruelly mocks them for daring to dream otherwise.