The Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes & Arthur Conan Doyle (2005 TV Movie) User Reviews

Very good, actually...

[nogginiscool · 7/10 · 27 July 2005]

Written by the writer who penned the excellent Murder Rooms series which chronicled ACD's adventures with Doctor Joseph Bell, I was looking forward to this and I wasn't disappointed. It was quite slow moving, with a lot of emphasis on Doyle's frustration at Sherlock Holmes which was very accurate and excellently portrayed. It was an interesting character study and very well shot ( on digital video, unusual for a period piece ). The acting was excellent all round, particularly Tim McInnery and Brian Cox although the actor who portrayed ACD, whose name I cannot remember impressed me no end. An excellent character study which has about the same amount of twists as any normal Sherlock Holmes case. Do see this if you get the chance

A bit slow and meandering

[CuriosityKilledShawn · 6/10 · 27 July 2005]

Plus I'm not entirely sure if this is based on truth or if it's all just a complete fantasy. The idea of Doyle's life being picked apart by an apparition of the very character he created but it's a bit far-fetched to be believable. Still, it's interesting at the very least.

However, very sad people like me will notice many anachronisms. Such as The Hound of the Baskervilles being hailed as Holmes' return from the grave even though it is set before his encounter with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. I did find it weird that Brian Cox plays Doyle's mentor Doctor Joseph Bell while his son Alan Cox played Watson in Young Sherlock Holmes.

Some nice locations and warm photography are about all this TV movie has to offer in terms of atmosphere. It's sparsely populated and some things are never quite clear. Like what was that gunshot when Kingsley briefly disappeared in the woods? Did that manifest in the cupboard actually exist? How did an apparition of Holmes, that only Doyle could see, end up questioning his mother? The score is also minimal, but could have been taken a bit further without being intrusive.

For Holmes/Doyle fans and the merely curious alike.

Slow start, impressive ending

[leno · 7/10 · 28 July 2005]

The first 50 minutes of this movie were quite boring. It focused on the personal problems Doyle had, including his sick wife, death threats by fans, a pushy publisher and feelings of guilt concerning his mentally ill father. Even though these subjects had an important impact on Doyle's life, I was more curious about the birth of Sherlock Holmes. The last 40 minutes were excellent. We finally got a look inside Doyle head, how he created Holmes and why he had to 'kill' Holmes. The actors are excellent. Including the intriguing Selden played by Tim McInnerny, Arthur Conan Doyle, a compelling role played by Douglas Henshall and Brian Cox as the 'role model' for Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Bell. The locations are good, especially for a TV movie and the camera work is nice. If the first 50 minutes were as good the the last 40 minutes this would have been a small masterpiece.

Could have been so much better

[Prof-Hieronymos-Grost · 6/10 · 28 July 2005]

The BBC has a very good record when it comes to period drama and so it was with baited breath I awaited this new entry in the Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle filmography....It was written for the screen by David Pirie the writer behind the truly Magnificent Murder Rooms series that also studied the life of Doyle and his reasons for creating his most famous character Sherlock Holmes....but this just wasn't up to scratch,and mainly due to some poor writing but seeing as how Pirie has a good track record I shall put the blame firmly on the Director.....The Hound of the Baskervilles did not herald the come back of Holmes...it was The Empty House....and what about when Doyle's father dies....all his mother wants to talk about is when is he going to bring Holmes back from the dead....not very realistic.....it did look good though and the acting was equally good

The Mystery of the Severed Ears.

[rmax304823 · 6/10 · 14 February 2008]

This is a fantasy, a mosaic made out of three complementary sets of tesserae. We have the "biographer" Selden (Tim McInnerny) whose assignment is to try to dig up any links between Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle (Douglas Henshall) and his fictional creation, the detective Sherlock Holmes, although it is agreed that any results will not be published. There are also contemporary episodes from which Selden is excluded, for good reason. These include a couple of women -- Doyle's own devoted wife and a knockout babe he would like to disarticulate with his tongue. And then there are flashbacks to Conan-Doyle's own earlier years, including his medical tutelage at Edinburgh under Doctor Joseph Bell (Bryan Cox). The three sets of episodes are woven together in a way that is sometimes confusing, the way a dream is confusing, but gradually revealing, until, by the end, all is explained.

Or almost all. I didn't get the recurring images of the severed ears crawling with maggots. Okay -- "The Cardboard Box." But why is this image repeated? Why is it IN there in the first place? I missed the first few minutes and perhaps the answer lies there, though I can't imagine how. Of course I could speculate, but it is always dangerous to theorize before one is in possession of all the relevant facts.

The most interesting moments -- not necessarily the most dramatic -- are when Dr. Bell pulls of one of those stunts that were later to become inferential staples of the Holmes character. Given a watch to examine, a watch that has been owned by a perfect stranger, Bell complains that the watch has recently been cleaned and this robs him of his most important clues to the owner's character, so he can only say that the man was careless, came from a good family but found his fortunes drop, punctuated by intervals of prosperity, that in later life his habits declined, probably because of drink, and that he had a penchant for 17-year-old blonds all his life. (I made that last one up.) Conan-Doyle must have represented one of the last twitches of the Scottish enlightenment that enthroned reason and empiricism, because when he was old, after he'd lost a son in the war, Conan-Doyle turned to mysticism and the séances that were fashionable at the time.

The mystery that is investigated in some detail is the reason why Conan-Doyle decided to "kill" his creation, Sherlock Holmes, at a time when Holmes was probably the most famous fictional character in the world, much as Brittany Spears is now. I failed to catch any big reveal towards the end, but at the climax Conan-Doyle resurrects his detective and they march off together into the sunlight. If the viewer is left still a little mystified, evidently Conan-Doyle wasn't, and that's what counts. However, the detective figure that is Holmes in the last few shots on the Great Grimpen Mire is not by any definition Sherlock. It is MYCROFT Holmes that we see. Who's kidding whom around here?

It's an inexpensive production from the BBC and it's about an interesting guy, Conan-Doyle. He was at his peak during the Jack-the-Ripper murders in 1875. Too bad he didn't tackle Saucy Jack. Of course Conan-Doyle can't be counted among the world's most graceful prose artists. On a dark and stormy night, "the wind sobbed like a child in the chimney." (How did the child get into the chimney?) And, true, our introduction to Holmes, in "A Study in Scarlet", makes him look an awful lot like Poe's August Dupin in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." But what does that matter? Conan-Doyle ground out these entertaining mysteries with sprezzatura, hiding his art by making it look so easy, and he gave us some deathless lines. "The curious incident of the dog in the night." "She was always THE woman." And, "Quick, Watson, the needle." (Well, he never said exactly that, but, again, so what?) You may have to be in the right mood to watch this. It's rather slow. But it's a must-see for the Irregulars.

Slow-moving, but not without interest

[helge-fauskanger · 7/10 · 28 March 2013]

This is not a TV movie with much of a drive to it; for the most part it moves along very patiently. But it did manage to stay vaguely interesting, and somewhat more so after the half-way point. If you know something about Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes alike, it may be amusing to watch this interpretation of the relationship between the creator and his creation.

The flashbacks to Conan Doyle's "youth" and his encounters with Dr. Bell come across as slightly awkward since the actor is obviously just as middle-aged as ever -- especially when seen in a lecture hall full of twenty-something students that are supposedly his peers.

The end may not make a whole lot of sense, though. So Mr. "Selden" was actually some kind of manifestation of Holmes himself? Our first thought is then that the whole affair was psychological -- just Conan Doyle's own fantasies playing out before our eyes. But "Selden" is apparently just as visible to Conan Doyle's butler, to his mother and to Dr. Bell -- interviewing them while Conan Doyle is not even present. So do we go for a wholesale paranormal explanation here, with a fictional character entering the physical world to influence his own author? When that character is supposed to be the ultra-rational Holmes, it becomes something of a contradiction in terms to involve him in a semi-supernatural phenomenon.

But be that as it may, the TV movie did manage to hold my attention throughout, despite its low-key/undramatic style and patient pacing. The relationship between Conan Doyle and his new girlfriend was also beautifully presented, in the same patient manner (and the actress wasn't hard on the eyes). We'll give the whole seven stars. Just don't expect anything like an action movie.

Interesting, but too gruesome

[HotToastyRag · 6/10 · 23 May 2022]

Fans of the Sherlock Holmes stories or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle will be fascinated by the self-titled tv biopic. Douglas Henshall plays Doyle, and he starts the movie a famous and beloved author. However, he's plagued by his past, and he has a secret longing to find out if readers will still love him if he stops writing about Holmes.

I knew absolutely nothing about Doyle's life, I've never read a Holmes story, and I can count on one hand how many Holmes films I've seen. Don't throw anything at me, I'm just demonstrating how much I was able to learn from this movie. People who have read biographies of Doyle or know the Holmes stories well might not get as much out of it. I won't spoil things for my fellow ignorant viewers by telling any plot points, but I will praise the supporting cast for keeping up with Henshall. This is a pretty heavy movie, with tears and fears around every corner. Sinéad Cusak plays Doyle's mother, Saskia Reeves is his wife, and Tim McInnerny plays his biographer.

One word of caution I will give: this movie is pretty gruesome. There are random inserts of dismembered body parts, as parts of Doyle's stories or his fears coming to life. They're very gross, unnecessary, and jarring. So if you have a weak stomach, be prepared to hide behind a pillow.

Fiction or semi-biography

[stippy · 8/10 · 7 August 2005]

I saw the film for the first time at BBC on July the 27 of 2005. For me it was a good interpretation of the person Conan Doyle,and I truly wonder what the sherlock fans think about it. I also think it is a movie for these fans whether they agree or not what is mentioned.You may ask yourself was A.C. Doyle a strong person or did he put himself in question. However he was the creator of the famous Holmes,but how much of it was a sort of semi-biography? Not the less I strongly put this adaption forward, it is a movie you have to see - even if you aren't interested in the Sherlock Holmes movies or books - look a it , enjoy yourself and have your own opinion of it.

Fiction and reality are one

[Dr_Coulardeau · 10/10 · 22 August 2010]

How can a writer decide to kill his character when this character is particularly famous and well known and admired and considered as a real man? He sure can and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did it without any regret and against all kinds of resistance from everywhere. But that starts in him a phenomenal storm under his skull, a fit of total schizophrenia. He relives his own life and he searches his youth and grown up life to try to understand why he killed his own doppelganger without whom he is nothing but the very shadow of himself, not even a shade cast by a dead tree, just a ghost accompanying his consumptive wife to the grave. That's what this film tells us and the life of Sir Conan Doyle is the centre of the film. The alcoholic father and in those days you ended up in an asylum, locked up behind bars and even with chains and a straight jacket if necessary. His frustrated mother who is paranoid about the end of this man she had institutionalized. The obsession of the young Conan Doyle with his professor, an obsession that was so true, so strong that he had to cannibalize him into his own fictional creation of a character. That's the kind of passion some students have the chance to meet in their studying years: the passionate attraction to a professor who will have the passionate answer of literally enchaining him with his own liberty so that the student will never be able to go away, to go another way because it would mean he is losing his freedom. That's how some students who have some difficulties in their life, family, money, ambition, wavering stamina, difficulty at defining their own future goal and route and following their own trail find the way up and out onto the road that is generally less traveled as the poet put it. Most students never encounter that ethereal passion and most professors never even imagine it can exist. They have vaguely heard of Conan Doyle and Doctor Joseph Bell. Or H.G. Wells and Professor Thomas Henry Huxley. They have also seen, witnessed and at times assisted such a passion but everyone, and first of all the professor and the student, remained quiet about it. They did not speak bout it. They respected it because a passion has to be respected and some of our best minds in this world have been produced by such scholastic passions. That's the fundamental system of English and also American universities: the personal relations between the professors and the students are considered as the most formative part of the teaching and training. At times it does not work at all because the student wavers and steps back, or because the professor is too hard and frightens the student away. It is not a question of gender at all, and in all the meanings of the term or of the term it takes the place of in our politically correct society. Here Conan Doyle after a very successful debut decides to cut off the umbilical cord. But will he succeed? Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID