"A Study in Scarlet" was published in 1887 as the debut of Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes, here adapted as Peter Cushing's third episode since taking over for Douglas Wilmer (completed Aug. 2, 1968, broadcast Sept. 16). The backstory set in the US is necessarily jettisoned for a more compact presentation that fully engages the viewer in the utter frustration of Holmes as a man stifled without a spark of investigatory deduction, composing a newspaper article on the subject that astounds Nigel Stock's Dr. Watson, before being called in on a murder case involving two Scotland Yard inspectors. A drunken American rake is found dead in an abandoned hotel building, the German word for revenge, 'rache,' written in blood on the wall, allowing Holmes to reason that the culprit was six feet tall and had long fingernails to scrawl his message at eye level. A ring found near the corpse had been taken off of a dead woman's finger in the opening shot, while a second murder takes place soon after, this victim stabbed rather than poisoned, the killer leaving behind another vital clue that allows Holmes to use his chemistry skills to finalize the solution without leaving his Baker Street flat. In spite of its prominence as the first Holmes adventure, this has rarely been granted a proper film version, but to be able to view it as one of Cushing's very best episodes makes for a rewarding experience. This would be the only series appearance for Inspector Lestrade, as played by William Lucas, while George A. Cooper as Inspector Gregson would return just once in the lost entry "The Greek Interpreter."