Customer Reviews

Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of Baskervilles: BBC (BBC Radio Presents)

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"The Hound of the Baskervilles" ranks as the most famous and also the best of the four Sherlock Holmes novels. It is the first Holmes novel I read as a child, and the combination of ancient curse, foreboding moor, and modern danger kept me turning the pages.

The BBC has once again done a masterful job of adapting the novel to the format of radio drama. When I first stumbled on to the BBC Holmes series, I thought Clive Merrison to be a scandalous over-actor, but going back and rereading some of the Holmes stories for the first time in decades shows that Merrison, of all the portrayers of Holmes, just might have gotten the oddball genius most nearly right. Holmes had a histrionic streak which caused him to keep his deductions secret until he could reveal them in the most sensational fashion possible, and Merrison captures this quirk of Holmes' character perfectly.

"The Hound" is unique among the Holmes novels because for a large part of the mystery, Holmes' character is offstage, appearing only at the last moment to bring events to a hair-raising denouement. Holmes' joint penchants for secrecy and sensation almost bring his client to grief, but all's well that ends well. This radio play begins, continues, and ends very well.