Product Description Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke return for their final bow in THE MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. Closing out the long running Granada series, Holmes and Watson are back on the case with six more arduous mysteries to solve. The ailing Jeremy Brett completes his portrayal of the Great Detective in style and Holmes' brother Mycroft plays a crucial role in the series. Episodes: The Three Gables, The Dying Detective, The Golden Pince-Nez, The Red Circle, The Mazarin Stone, The Cardboard Box .com Jeremy Brett ended his riveting run as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous sleuth in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1994), the final set of episodes in the long-running Granada Television series. In The Three Gables, an old widow receives a suspicious offer of a large sum of money to move out of her depressing mansion and leave absolutely everything behind. Holmes looks into this strange proposition and comes face to face with an enforcer and powerful pugilist, who Holmes cuts down to size with verbal agility. This adaptation may, in all honesty, be an improvement on Doyle's original story. The Dying Detective features Brett in a particularly strenuous and emotionally compelling performance as the Great Detective. Following his uncharacteristically provocative threat to expose a murderer, Holmes becomes mortally ill and delirious. Brett, who was actually suffering from cardiac problems at the time, certainly looks the part of the doomed hero, and his urgency in the role is haunting and poignant. With Dr. Watson (the also excellent Edward Hardwicke) absent from The Golden Pince-Nez, Holmes is joined by his brother Mycroft (Charles Gray) in an investigation into the murder of a secretary to a chain-smoking, invalid professor. Gray's amusing, inscrutable performance helps supplement that of the valiantly struggling Brett, whose considerable health problems a decade into the series are well known to his devoted fans. The Red Circle draws upon facts related to a one-time, secret Italian terrorist organization. Holmes and Watson investigate a mysterious lodger who tells Holmes of her ties to the Red Circle and of her efforts, along with those of her missing husband, to break free of the Circle's long arm of revenge. The ailing Brett largely stepped aside for The Mazarin Stone, a radical reinvention of the Doyle story, which was based on a one-act play also written by Doyle and performed in 1921. Instead of Holmes solving the crime, this time it is his brother, Mycroft (Gray again), ably assisted by Watson. (Sherlock does show up from time to time in a dream-like refrain, thinking through some knotty problem in a moonlighted garden.) Despite the absence of Brett from the main proceedings, the episode is still fun to watch, if largely out of curiosity to see Mycroft in action. Controversial upon its first publication in 1893, The Cardboard Box confronts some nasty consequences of adultery. Holmes and Watson link the grisly mailing of two severed human ears with a complicated love triangle. Holmes, an expert in ears, naturally, has no problem with the mystery of where they came from. But toward what end mortals pursue "this circle of misery, violence, and fear" is another question. Though still ill at the time and at the end of his Holmes career, Brett gives a focused, remarkable performance while Hardwicke lends strong support. --Tom Keogh
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Been working flawlessly after 3 years
Very good quality
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A Fond Farewell
To love Conan Doyle's great detective Sherlock Holmes was never so satisfying as when the brilliant actor, the late and profoundly missed Jeremy Brett, breathed life into his fictional bones giving us arguably the greatest depiction of the Baker Street sleuth ever captured on film.For me, Brett's is the truest Holmes ever attempted in movies or TV, and the Granada productions more authentically Victorian-era London than any made before this fantastic series or since.There are some who deride Brett's later portrayals of Holmes, when the actor was very ill and had lost the sleek, angular look that Holmes had been endowed, both by his creator Doyle and his most popular illustrator, Sidney Paget. For me, that criticism is pure balderdash.When taken in its entirety, the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series stands the test of time as the definitive telling of the stories, the later episodes underscoring Brett's courage as he faced personal tests that shattered his emotional and physical well-being. I would argue that it is that very human element in Brett's portrayal that makes his Holmes so breathtakingly accurate, compelling and poignant. Holmes denied his humanity and in so doing became more vulnerable as a human being exposing deep character flaws and weaknesses. In Brett, we not only see but feel those shortcomings, and something deeper, too: each person's ultimate struggle to find his or her place in life before death calls us home.There are 36 episodes and five feature-length films in the Brett-Granada series that spanned 1984 to 1994. Holmes' "Boswell," otherwise known as Dr. John Watson, was adeptly played by David Burke until 1985, then Edward Hardwicke for the remainder of the series. This box set, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, represent the last of the episodes and were produced in 1994 by June Wyndham-Davies. After a decade as Holmes, Brett filmed these last episodes then died Sept. 13, 1995.The episodes collected here include: The Three Gables; The Dying Detective; The Golden Pince-Nez; The Red Circle; The Mazarin Stone; and the Cardboard Box. (The Dying Detective is especially haunting as Holmes feigns a fatal illness to capture a killer and it is obvious that Brett is very ill.)Other boxed sets from MPI include the remainder of the series: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; The Return of Sherlock Holmes; The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes; and the Featured Film Collection that includes The Master Blackmailer, The Last Vampyre, The Eligible Bachelor, The Sign of Four, and the immortal Hound of the Baskervilles.I am thrilled that MPI has FINALLY put the entire series out on DVD. I also remain deeply grateful to Jeremy Brett and everyone involved in creating these productions.
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The Blu-Rays, and Jeremy Brett (R.I.P.[!]) come to their end. God rest "Sherlock" & "Doctor Watson"!
This final set of season/series 4 episodes only has six episodes as we see Jeremydepart the series, and, this Earth..This season stars [as do all 4 seasons/"series"] Jeremy Brett [1933-'95] as Holmes.Edward Hardwicke [1932-2011], Sir Cedric Hardwickes' son, plays Doctor Watsonin ALL, but, the first season/series.I bought the 12 DVD-disc collection, back in 2009, for $222. But! Currently, acomplete, 12 BLU-Ray-disc collection costs $150-$200.Buy each of the five, different BLU-RAY collections INDIVIDUALLY.Due to age and other factors, the DVDs are inferior to the newer Blu-Rays.Buy-as-soon-as-possible; the prices will, soon, rise as there're, only 6, each,of the [individual season-/series-] Blu-Ray sets left. The entire collected box-set has been mentioned as having defective retaining spindles, and actuallyCOST a bit extra that way.I prefer t-h-e-s-e sets to the [imperfect] VHS-video-cassette-tapes and DVDs.Here's a Listing, in-order, with their prices as of 4/30/2021:** Adventures of Sherlock Holmes- [3 Blu-Ray discs] @ $35** The Return of Sherlock Holmes- [3 Blu-Ray discs] @ $20**The Casebook of Sherlock Holms[2 Blu-Ray discs] @ $20*The Sherlock Holmes Feature Films[2 Blu-Ray discs]@$25*The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes - [2 Blu-Ray discs]@$15~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Buy them while you CAN! ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~Jeremy Brett, literally, put his heart AND sole into these episodes, and while SOME lament ". . Memoirs . ." as being the least of the four, in this collection, I find NO fault with ANY episode, knowing that while the fictional Sherlock Holmes died at the end of Season One, the READERS back-in-the-day demanded Sherlock return from the dead [seen as the second-season, here on video].During "The Memoirs" episodes you can see "Sherlock" die a second time, from which there is NO RETURN,except in these marvelously filmed, and executed, episodes of thirty-six 50-minute, and, five, feature-length movies.Bravo!
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