In this episode of Adapt or Perish, we discuss Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes! This is the second of three episodes that we’re releasing on the character. We covered The Hound of the Baskervilles here.
For this episode, we watched 15 different actors portray the world’s greatest detective. Here they are in chronological order, with the piece or pieces that we watched:
- Arthur Wontner. He played Holmes in five movies between 1931 and 1937. We watched him in The Sleeping Cardinal (or Sherlock Holmes’ Fatal Hour (1931).
- Basil Rathbone. He starred as Holmes in 14 movies between 1939 and 1946. We watched him in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939).
- Peter Cushing. He starred in movies and television as Holmes from 1959 to 1984. We watched him in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) and multiple episodes of Sherlock Holmes (1968).
- John Neville. He played Holmes once in A Study in Terror (1965), going up against Jack the Ripper.
- Robert Stephens. He starred in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970).
- Nicol Williamson. He played Holmes in the film adaptation of Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976), with Robert Duvall as Watson and Alan Arkin as Sigmund Freud.
- Christopher Plummer. He played Holmes in Murder by Decree (1979) alongside James Mason as Watson. This was a Jack the Ripper story, too.
- Tom Baker. He played Holmes in the serialized BBC production of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1982).
- Ian Richardson. He played Holmes in two TV movies, both in 1983: The Sign of Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles.
- Peter O’Toole. He provided the voice for Holmes in three animated movies in 1983. We watched Sherlock Holmes and a Study in Scarlet.
- Jeremy Brett. He played the character in 41 episodes of Sherlock Holmes for Granada Television between 1984 and 1994. This show has been watched multiple times by our hosts.
- Charlton Heston. He played Holmes on stage (1980) and TV (1991) in The Crucifer of Blood.
- James D’Arcy. He played Holmes once in the TV movie Sherlock: Case of Evil in 2002.
- Rupert Everett. He starred as Holmes in the BBC One TV movie Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking in 2004.
- Robert Downey Jr. He starred with Jude Law as Watson in both Sherlock Holmes (2009) and its sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011).
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