Sherlock Holmes - And The Leading Lady/Incident At Victoria Falls

I have these two tv movies in their original Revelation DVD release a couple of years back.  Engaging non-canon twaddle, they'll outrage Holmes fans but they're solid fun, name-dropping real-life historical characters into the narrative left, right and centre.  For my money, Lee and Macnee (no capital N, Stuart) acquit themselves surprisingly well.

The movies/ mini series were made for television by an outfit called Harmony Gold, in association with a bunch of European banks and Silvio Berlusconi Communications.  Harmony Gold also did an all-star adaptation of Jules Verne's Around The World In Eighty Days with Pierce Brosnan that's also fairly entertaining.

Image quality's a little on the dodgy side as these movies although shot on 35mm were postproduced on 1991 vintage NTSC video with all the video artefacts that entails (like Star Trek Next Gen).

A pleasurable way of spending six hours when there's only Strictly or X Factor on the box.

I thought Lee was the least convincing Holmes ever. Wooden and a little bewildered throughout. He is an actor with amazing presence in the right role but in my opinion this most certainly wasn't it. Macnee (sorted that 'N'!) was better as Watson. Did you ever see how he fared as Holmes in the third of these releases?

I agree Christopher Lee's off his form in this one, but then again any time he's not playing a villain he seems to be on the wrong foot.  I reckon his worst performance has to be the Russian police chief in Police Academy 7 where he looks as if he's just realised he's on the wrong set.

Haven't seen the third Holmes "Hound of London" with Pat Macnee in the lead.  The IMDb listing makes it sound frightful. I think it might be a different production company as well.  Unlike the two Lee productions, there are no "names" in the cast list other than Pat himself.

Interestingly, Patrick Macnee's IMDb entry includes another Holmes picture in 1996 - "Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Temporal Nexus".  No cast details other than the lad himself, and apparently other than an airing at the 1996 Cannes Film Market it's never seen the light of day.  Associated Television International production.