A Scandal in Bohemia

A masked visitor calls at Baker Street on confidential business, and Holmes, who misses very little, knows the man at once. It is the King of Bohemia, and he is in a bind. A dynastic marriage is being arranged for him, and his American former mistress, the actress and singer Irene Adler, still holds a photograph he would very much like back.

The retrieval turns out to be harder than a monarch expects. Adler is quick, and Holmes has to go to genuinely remarkable lengths to get anywhere near the picture. Watson tags along through the scheming, and by the end he is quietly sure of something Holmes would never admit. His friend, the great brain, is smitten. There is a reason Irene Adler is the one woman in the canon who ever got the better of him.

Paul Annett directs from a script by Arthur Conan Doyle, John Hawkesworth and Alexander Baron. Jeremy Brett's Holmes is all quick stillness and velvet courtesy, and David Burke's Watson is the solid, decent anchor the part needs. Gayle Hunnicutt makes Adler a worthy opponent rather than a prize to be won, which is exactly the balance the story requires. Wolf Kahler's King of Bohemia is suitably grand and faintly ridiculous. Michael Carter, Max Faulkner, Rosalie Williams, Tessa Worsley, Will Tacey and Tim Pearce fill out the household and the clergy.

This was the episode that launched the Granada series, and it picked its material well. The best-known of the short stories gets the care it deserves here. Michael Cox produced, Patrick Gowers wrote the music, and Michael B. Popley handled the cinematography.

A fine start, then. The chase is a delight. But the ending, where the great detective loses the one game that mattered and minds it less than he should, lands with more warmth than most of the adventures that followed.