Houdini, Doyle and Adelaide investigate when a nun from one of the notorious Magdalene Laundries is murdered. A witness claims the murderer was a young woman tormented by the nun - but she's... Read allHoudini, Doyle and Adelaide investigate when a nun from one of the notorious Magdalene Laundries is murdered. A witness claims the murderer was a young woman tormented by the nun - but she's been dead for 6 months.Houdini, Doyle and Adelaide investigate when a nun from one of the notorious Magdalene Laundries is murdered. A witness claims the murderer was a young woman tormented by the nun - but she's been dead for 6 months.
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Did you know
- TriviaAt the book launch near the beginning of the episode, Doyle is approached by a man wearing an Inverness Cape and a deerstalker hat. He holds a curved calabash pipe. The man gleefully says to Doyle, "The game is afoot." This episode is set in 1901. The story that is the source for the quotation is "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange" which was published in 1904. The quote would have had no association with Holmes in 1901. The cape, the hat, and the pipe, however, could possibly have been known to a Holmes aficionado. Although not referred to in the stories themselves, Sidney Paget, the original illustrator of the stories, introduced the cape and hat in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" (1891), and the calabash pipe was first used as a Holmes accoutrement by the actor William Gillette in his 1899 play "Sherlock Holmes." It's balance afforded him a clear delivery of his lines whilst he held it in his mouth. It has, since, been used by almost every actor who has essayed the role of Holmes, whether on stage or screen. Although pipes are mentioned in the stories, and depicted in the Paget drawings, they are never the, now, trademark, curved, calabash pipe of Sherlock Holmes.
- GoofsWhen Holmes and Doyle are discussing their theories of the case, Houdini dismisses Doyle's statement with "Garbage in, garbage out." That phrase didn't come into use until the advent of the computer age, more than five decades after the time frame of this program. It's highly unlikely that Houdini would have invented that phrase, given the absence of evidence that anyone picked it up from such a celebrity and used it in the intervening years.
- Quotes
Sergeant George Gudgett: Sir, I can handle this case myself, without help from a writer and a magician.
Arthur Conan Doyle: I'm quite familiar with police protocol.
Sergeant George Gudgett: Yes, you regularly mock them and us in your stories.
The ongoing issue of Cable vs. Broadcast content, made more complicated now with upstarts like Amazon and Netflix joining the fray as streaming services, is in bold relief comparing these two. "Houdini and Doyle" is square, old-fashioned and lame in the worst way. I grew up addicted to and watching religiously mainstream TV dramas and action shows that coddled me - and was highly entertained: dozens of Westerns ranging from hits like "Rawhide" and "Have Gun -Will Travel" to personal favorite flops like "Black Saddle"; "Perry Mason" and especially Gene "Bat Mastersn" Barry in his Amos Burke character of "Burke's Law". Sure, I also enjoyed the avant garde of McGoohan as "Secret Agent" and "The Prisoner", "The Outer Limits", Richard Boone's short- lived anthology series with a repertory company cast, and Robert Loggia as "T.H.E. Cat".
These cornball but effective shows are what "Houdini and Doyle" reminds me of. The originals were quaint, age-appropriate and hold a warm, nostalgic place in my heart. The new one is crap. In particular the Houdini performance was annoying beyond belief - that guy really got on my nerves in a hurry. I had read all of H.P. Lovecraft's short stories ghosted for Houdini and his collected letters discussing Houdini, and that actual link alone would have made for a more interesting show in the vein of "Penny Dreadful" or even "American Horror Story" in which HPL could have been injected into the mix along with other interesting historical figures. All we got in this episode is name-dropping (Tesla, etc.) at a party.
By contrast, #3.1 of "Penny Dreadful" was loaded with great performances led by Patti LuPone and Wes Studi, incredible production values and suspenseful introduction of new characters and plot lines guaranteed to hook the viewer. "Doyle" had none of these.
This episode seemed vaguely to be underpinned by the brilliant Judi Dench movie "Philomena" but without that picture's trenchant criticism of the Catholic church. Instead, the mistreatment of young women and their loss of their babies became mere gimmick for "tonight's episode" in which the victimized woman becomes the bad guy. Yuck!
Pilot was directed by Stephen Hopkins (part of the show's production team), alumnus of "24" and Kevin Spacey's current TV hit. Perhaps his tolerance for the hambone self-indulgence which is Spacey accounts for the poor performance tolerated by him for Houdini's role. This actor as Houdini should have been replaced, not signed for the duration - he's unwatchable.
- lor_
- May 3, 2016
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