Sherlock Holmes: Season 2

BBC Sherlock without Moffat

I actually didn't expect how much I was getting off the show. I heard that he had a very problematic production, he was given little time for rehearsals and memorizing lines, the main actors quarreled with the directors and producers because of this, Wilmer considered the scripts disgusting and personally worked as an unofficial script editor for free and rewrote all the scripts fitting them closer to Doyle's primary sources, etc.

But I'll be honest, you won't guess any of this from the final result. The series looks very cheerful, it adapts the literary material quite accurately. I had already forgotten some of the plots, so it was even more interesting to watch the less pop episodes.
Both Wilmer and Cushing are gorgeous and top-notch Holmeses. And both are different: each actor brought some of his own chips to the game and to the character, so it's very difficult to consider them as one version of the character (even though it's one series). To be honest, it's really hard for me to say which one I liked the most.
Nigel Stock is a magnificent Watson, more bookish, but still at the beginning with an admixture of Watson's imbecility, Nigel Bruce, which decreased during the first season, and which was completely absent in the second (at least in the surviving episodes).

Yes, about accessibility: the black-and-white first season can be watched in full, only two episodes have survived half, but there are reconstructions; but the color second one is mostly lost (6 episodes out of 16 remain), which is especially strange and unfortunate (not that it would not be a pity for the first one), because the series in color, it looks indecently better and more modern than the first one. I even wonder if it's just the color, or should I have chosen a better set for the color cameras? I would still probably bet on the first one.

In short, I recommend it to anyone who is not afraid of years of production and who loves classic detective stories and Holmes in particular. Actually, I only wanted to watch the Blue Carbuncle to recharge my Christmas and New Year's mood, but it was hard to stop. You can start with the color surviving episodes with Cushing: he's probably the most familiar actor for everyone, and the series in color looks much more familiar to viewers of the 21st century. But there is no need to neglect the first seasons.

PS Douglas Wilmer played a small role in modern Sherlock, a member of the Diogenes club annoyed with Watson.

A new good show