#mightymads

Such a Strange Day by mightymads

John-lock Love Letters #2049

John Watson still grieved for Sherlock Holmes. This time he did not suffer it alone.

This is titled Not Alone, an art treat for @mightymads at the Holmestice Winter 2018, which I said to Mightymads I would post here ages ago but then I predictably forgot to.

Based on Mightymads’ want-to-receive list, I went with Post-Reichenbach with a bit of H/C and romance.

Oh, gosh, so much of this is a matter of personal taste! For myself, I like a competent, capable Watson, a Holmes that feels human joys and frailities, and a strong, affectionate relationship between them. So, things I love that deserve a bigger following:

Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson (1979-1980), starring Geoffrey Whitehead and Donald Pickering, is one of my two favorite discoveries from making the vid. Holmes is reserved but warm-hearted (and excellent with children!), and Watson is strong and active, with much to contribute to the partnership. (There’s a little bit of a through-line where Watson teaches himself Holmes’ methods, getting better and better at it as the series progresses.) Furthermore, the Holmes-and-Watson dynamic is lovely, with lots of affectionate, teasing banter. (In fact, Holmes can barely stop trolling Watson for long enough to solve a case!) Honestly, this is my comfort adaptation, the one I’m mostly like to put on when I’m blue or anxious and want to feel better. 

(Also, Holmes and Watson wear eyeliner, and who doesn’t need a Holmes or Watson in eyeliner?)?

If I understand its history correctly, it never aired in the UK or the US (and thus is far better known in Italy and Germany than among anglophones); further, it was tied up in a rights battle for yonks, so the only DVD release that I know of is dual-language German. But if you can tolerate somewhat-deteriorated VHS rips, most of it is available on YouTube. (Try this playlist, or this one.) I love it well enough that I gave myself the German DVD for a birthday present: it’s region-free, so it’ll play on both US and UK machines.

名探偵ホームズ | Sherlock Hound (1984-1985). Charming and sweet and silly (omg, Moriarty and his over-the-top mecha!), this is my other big favorite from making the vid. This is Japanese anime (the original six episodes were directed by Miyazaki, before the project got tied up in a rights battle and he moved on to the other things), set in a steampunk universe where everyone is a dog. (Except for Moriarty, who is a wolf.) Hound himself is hands-down one of my very favorite Holmeses: courteous, warm-hearted, human in his frailities, passionate in his defense of his clients, and with a child-like joy in his calling. Watson is fierce and growly and stubborn but also very warm-hearted, and the two of them are smitten with each other. (And both of them with Mrs. Hudson. Everyone loves Mrs. Hudson: even Moriarty!) Moriarty is ridonk over-the-top and I adore him: a brilliant inventor but a sad disaster at criminal masterminding. If you want more info, I have a longer post on Dreamwidth about why I love it, complete with links to various moments in the series.

If you’re in the US, the whole thing is available on the studio’s YouTube channel, although they have the episode order wrong and a few eps misnamed: start with “The Four Signatures” and continue to “The Mazalin Stone,” then you’re fine with playlist-order thereafter. Outside of the US I have no idea how to lay hands on it, sorry.

If you do subtitles, there are three Russian adaptations that are well worth your time: 

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson (1979-1986) aka “Russian Holmes” 

My Dearly Beloved Detective (1986), and 

Sherlock Holmes (2013) aka “New Russian Holmes”. 

The original Russian Holmes (1979-1986) is much like the Jeremy Brett Granada series in its loving regard for canon, and is similarly well-respected. Livanov and Solomin are a charming Holmes and Watson, and I honestly like their Reichenbach better than Granada’s. I find it a little slowly-paced overall, but if you’ve finished Granada and want something similar but with its own take, this is a solid choice.

My Dearly Beloved Detective is… gosh… a female-centric tragi-comic satire, maybe? It’s a bizarre little film, but I am fond of it. Its premise: all of England, much taken with Conan Doyle’s stories, cried out for a Holmes and Watson of their very own, and Shirley and Jane were hired to fulfill the need; unfortunately, Scotland Yard is jealous of Shirley’s and Jane’s success, and conspire to take them down. The film has as devoted a femslash following as you might expect, but I don’t think it will spoil too much if I warn you that nearly all the fic is pining or fix-it or both.

New Russian Holmes is a subversion of the original Russian series, where instead of a romantic fog-and-gaslight Victorian London, we get something much more gritty and Dickensian. I adore this series’ willingness to get down into the muck and wrestle with Holmes canon, but a lot of people hate it for that very same reason, so ymmv. I will say, however, that Panin is one of the very best Watsons running, and anyone who disagrees is categorically wrong. 

All three of these (and more besides!) can be found via @spiritcc, who is part of a fan-driven subtitling team that has heroically provided English subtitles to a variety of Russian Holmes adaptations. Masterpost for video and subtitles here.

Mystery Queen (2017) is a Korean drama that was released too late for us to use in the vid, but ugggggghhhhh it hurts me that it’s not in there. Holmes is an adorable, sweet, scythingly sharp housewife who is studying in secret against her family’s wishes to become a police detective; Watson is the highly-decorated police detective that she ends up collaborating with. I cannot convey how much I adored the first season: on the one hand, emotionally complex cases that ripped my heart out; on the other, fanservice slathered on with a goddamned trowel. (In the first episode, Holmes and Watson went from meet-cute to Three Garridebs in seven minutes flat.) I just. I mean. It’s a hard-fought Holmes-and-Watson relationship, but good god I love them each and together, and by series’ end either one would walk through fire for the other. I haven’t watched season two yet, but I have high hopes for it.

You can watch it with English subtitles on Vicki.com: Season 1 and Season 2.

Maybe there is something of the early 20th century you could recommend? I was rather intrigued by your mentioning that before Nigel Bruce Watsons tended to be youthful and fairly competent

Hah! I had wondered whether to include a pre-Rathbone/Bruce rec in the previous list!

The thing is, Nigel Bruce was a watershed in Watsons not just in terms of characterization, but also in screen time: before Bruce, Watsons tended to be young and handsome, but they didn’t get much time on the screen. (For example, John Barrymore’s Watson, Roland Young, was a natty young thing, but like all Watsons in any production based on the Gillette play, he’s barely present in the story.)

The big exception to the lack of Watson screen-time was Arthur Wontner and his two Watsons, Ian Fleming and Ian Hunter. The Wontner scripts were written such that Holmes and Watson were investigative partners in keeping with their relationship in the books -- Watson is present for a lot of the storytelling, and helps investigate sometimes -- and even better, Wontner and Fleming (the actor who played Watson in all but one of the flicks) have a lovely, affectionate dynamic together. Fleming did have a tendency to get tied to the train tracks every so often, but I’m down for a heroic rescue here and there, just so long as he’s not always damselling. (Which it’s fine, he isn’t.)

Sadly, the Wontner films are in bad shape -- the audio in particular can be hard to make out -- and the pacing can be strange, but the surviving Wontner films I enjoyed best were The Sign of Four (1932) and The Silver Blaze, aka Murder at the Baskervilles (1937). Sign has the substitute Watson (Ian Hunter), and I’m sad to say it’s unpleasantly racist toward the end (depressingly, except for Sherlock Hound, I never found a version of SIGN that wasn’t), but I enjoyed the three-way dynamic between Holmes, Watson, and Mary. Silver Blaze I remember less well overall, but there are some bits toward the end that I love. (Okay, fine, I admit it: I ate up with a spoon the Watson-in-peril on this one.) 

Both films are on Youtube:

The Sign of Four (1932)

@sanguinarysanguinity I’d like to write a review for this series on DW. Thank you for posting links to vids with subtitles! I’ll include them into the post if you don’t mind and will credit you of course

When I made this blog it was all about BBC Sherlock. I didn’t know if he would, but I knew John should accept the candle he was offered at Angelo’s, with its queer and romantic implications. So here on this blog Sherlock and John get their candle—they are openly in love.

Later as I got absorbed into the long and joyous history of Holmes/Watson lore, I considered changing the blog title to something more Edwardian; but Watson would still have called his partner Sherlock, with even more significance. First names then were mostly only for family and lovers. And a candle lit between them on their table, or carried upstairs to a bedchamber, would have meant love, too.