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Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Mazarin Stone - Sherlock Holmes VHS Video
 Based on 4 reviews.
.Amazon.com The ailing Jeremy Brett largely stepped aside for this 1996 radical reinvention of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story, which was based on a one-act play also written by Doyle and performed in 1921. Instead of Brett's Sherlock Holmes solving the crime, this time it is his brother, Mycroft (Charles Gray), ably assisted by Dr. John Watson (Edward Hardwicke). (Sherlock does show up from time to time in a dream-like refrain, thinking through some knotty problem in a moonlighted garden.) The plot concerns the theft of a great, yellow diamond from Whitehall, worth a 100,000 or so English pounds. 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. --Tom Keogh Reader Reviews Problematic, but worth watching, September 17, 2003 Reviewer: aardvarklf from United States The Granada series is full of top-quality productions, clearly done by people who loved Conan Doyle's stories and were willing to go the extra mile to make Victorian/Edwardian England come alive. As for the title character...as far as I'm concerned, that keen-eyed, black-clad man on the screen isn't Jeremy Brett at all, it's Sherlock Holmes incarnate. His Holmes is by turns brilliant, arrogant, mischievous, sneering, moody, insufferable, and kindhearted, and Brett earns high marks for making him both larger than life and touchingly - at times almost heartbreakingly - human. If you're new to the series, however, "Mazarin Stone" is a terrible place to start. As other reviewers have noted, Brett's poor health kept him off-camera for about 95% of the film, and he leaves an unfillable hole. Edward Hardwicke (Dr. Watson) and Charles Gray (Holmes' brother Mycroft) are fine actors who do far more than just make Brett look good, but they can't carry an entire episode by themselves. And yet...the Granada team deserves credit for their creative efforts to circumvent two major problems with this episode. The first was their source material; "Mazarin Stone" is widely regarded as the worst Sherlock Holmes story in the Canon. By filling in the plot with elements from another adventure ("The Three Garridebs"), they created a solid hybrid, making eminently watchable television out of a barely readable story. The second problem, sadly, was Brett himself. Age and illness dimmed neither his acting ability nor his deft touch for the subtleties of Holmes' character, but after a certain point, they did keep him from looking the part. Holmes led a rough, unhealthy life, and he's not supposed to be good-looking, but he *is* supposed to be thin to the point of emaciation and relatively young - in his 30s and 40s at most. Brett was a slim and youthful 50 when he started in the role (if anything, he was too handsome for it back then), but as time passed, he aged and put on weight. I saw some of the later episodes on PBS in the early '90s and was underwhelmed; brilliant actor or no, he simply didn't look like the gaunt, high-strung sleuth I'd envisioned. Keeping Brett off-camera, therefore, had its merits, and the manner in which it was done made the best of a bad situation. From his mysterious departure at the beginning of "Mazarin" to his dreamlike and dishevelled reappearance at its conclusion, the absent Holmes broods over the story like an enigmatic spectre. It's an interesting psychological effect, and one almost wishes Granada had taken the bold step of making the episode entirely posthumous - using it to show Holmes' continuing influence over the two men who knew him best and turning his quiet "Brother mine...bravo!" at the end into an eerie benediction. Overall, "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" is compelling not so much what it shows, but for what it doesn't.
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