Belated Compliments of the Season! (I was busy studying a hat)

This print is inspired by the Sherlock Holmes story "The Blue Carbuncle": 'tis the season for wild goose chases, and of course, larceny (if you can bring it off).

— John Watson, “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (via teaformrholmes)

The Devil’s Pet Baits: Granada Holmes, “The Blue Carbuncle”

Did I say that if you only watch one episode from the Brett/Burke era it should be “The Speckled Band?” That was MADNESS. You should NOT watch only one episode from this era, you should and you must watch BOTH “The Speckled Band” and “The Blue Carbuncle,” which may perhaps be Granada’s greatest gift to the fandom. I know it’s almost Easter; but honestly, any time you watch “The Blue Carbuncle,” it’s Christmas. The production values are generally pretty good: Victoriana is everywhere, all the guest stars seem to be bringing their A game, there are more extras running around in this episode than all of the earlier ones combined, and all in all it reminds me pleasantly of another vintage 1980s Christmas special, the George C. Scott A Christmas Carol. But the best thing about this episode is that we get to watch Holmes and Watson have Christmas together in 221B. All y’all who Johnlock and are constantly pining after cozy domestic scenes of the two of them making tea and wearing jumpers together, I just want you to know that “The Blue Carbuncle” has ALL of that, and it is as warm and beautiful and delicious as a slice of plum pudding isn’t.

(In the late 1980s my family moved to London and I had my first traditional English Christmas dinner, and I never got over the disappointment. But I digress.)

Moffat and Gatiss never did an episode based on this one, though they did incorporate Henry Baker’s hat into “The Empty Hearse.” There’s so much more they could have done with it, and which I, in my modest way, tried to do. But maybe they were afraid they couldn’t do it as well as Granada did.

Brett and Burke’s teamwork in this episode is outstanding, and that is probably what I’m going to spend most of my time talking about. But there are some very odd things about “The Blue Carbuncle” as a story that this adaptation doesn’t iron out—most of them relating directly to the blue carbuncle itself.

Keep reading

Sketches for “The Blue Carbuncle” and “The Beryl Coronet” by Gibert Keith Chesterton, from G. K. Chesterton’s Sherlock Holmes, ed. Steven Doyle, NY: The Baker Street Irregulars, 2003.

I LOVE THIS I LOVE THIS

Forget offering to take a case for someone who can’t pay, forget taking a client just as they’re being arrested. Holmes is doing all this without anyone hiring him or even the police offering a consultant’s fee to ask his help. And for a stranger, one he’s never spoken to or even seen, and could very well be guilty! He’s a former convict, after all, and especially in Victorian thought that is a Type of person.

But the possibility that this stranger and former convict may be sentenced for something he didn’t do has Holmes running in circles in the freezing streets of London, chasing down leads. It especially stands out that he doesn’t do it for the curiosity of the mystery, like he loves to talk about so often (see: The Red-Headed League).

Again more lead-up to the story’s conclusion: Holmes is doing this for people, and to make the world a better place, not just for entertainment or to enforce laws or a concept of justice.

John Watson, “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (via teaformrholmes)

— John Watson, “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (via teaformrholmes)

this is cute but does it also mean holmes spent the christmas alone…

We could not resist the implicit plea to answer this question! By Victorian standards, no! The period between Christmas and Twelfth Night (January 6) was filled with parties, and especially the week between Christmas and New Year was observed as a festive time. You’ll often find Christmas and New Year linked, for instance, on those wonderfully weird Victorian Christmas cards.

So Watson, having presumably spent December 25 with Mary Morstan (to whom he’s canonically married at this point), is going around to Baker Street on the 27th to visit his somewhat antisocial best friend, and thus bring Christmas festivity to him. Since SCAN tells us that Holmes “loathed society with his whole Bohemian soul,” and since SIGN shows his initial reaction to the Watson-Morstan marriage as less than cordial, I think it’s a very safe inference to draw that, in canon, Watson (on his own and Mary’s behalf) invited Holmes for Christmas dinner, and got vague bohemian noises of demurral.

Adaptations have, as far as I am aware, universally ignored this. In canon reception more generally, gleefully ignoring Conan Doyle’s timeline (such as it is,) Holmes and Watson are eternally imagined as sharing lodgings in Baker Street. Vincent Starrett’s sonnet 221B, where it is always 1895, probably has a good deal to do with this. So do the demands of screen narrative, though. The sometimes convoluted and sometimes vague ways in which ACD contrives to get them together for a case after Watson has moved out are frequently, cheerfully simplified out of existence by keeping Watson at Baker Street. And perhaps nowhere is this more marked than in BLUE, where the Holmes and Watson of television share domesticity and exchange presents.

The BBC Radio's version of The Blue Carbuncle contains, what has to be said is, one of my favourite scenes... It's when Holmes and Watson are standing in the street after proving the innocence of John Horner.

Here it is in its full text glory 💖

From Bert Coules' book 221 BBC.

that time when Holmes called someone a shrimp

— John Watson, “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (via teaformrholmes)

this is cute but does it also mean holmes spent the christmas alone…

We could not resist the implicit plea to answer this question! By Victorian standards, no! The period between Christmas and Twelfth Night (January 6) was filled with parties, and especially the week between Christmas and New Year was observed as a festive time. You’ll often find Christmas and New Year linked, for instance, on those wonderfully weird Victorian Christmas cards.

So Watson, having presumably spent December 25 with Mary Morstan (to whom he’s canonically married at this point), is going around to Baker Street on the 27th to visit his somewhat antisocial best friend, and thus bring Christmas festivity to him. Since SCAN tells us that Holmes “loathed society with his whole Bohemian soul,” and since SIGN shows his initial reaction to the Watson-Morstan marriage as less than cordial, I think it’s a very safe inference to draw that, in canon, Watson (on his own and Mary’s behalf) invited Holmes for Christmas dinner, and got vague bohemian noises of demurral.

Adaptations have, as far as I am aware, universally ignored this. In canon reception more generally, gleefully ignoring Conan Doyle’s timeline (such as it is,) Holmes and Watson are eternally imagined as sharing lodgings in Baker Street. Vincent Starrett’s sonnet 221B, where it is always 1895, probably has a good deal to do with this. So do the demands of screen narrative, though. The sometimes convoluted and sometimes vague ways in which ACD contrives to get them together for a case after Watson has moved out are frequently, cheerfully simplified out of existence by keeping Watson at Baker Street. And perhaps nowhere is this more marked than in BLUE, where the Holmes and Watson of television share domesticity and exchange presents.

John Watson, “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (via teaformrholmes)

The Devil’s Pet Baits: Granada Holmes, “The Blue Carbuncle”

Did I say that if you only watch one episode from the Brett/Burke era it should be “The Speckled Band?” That was MADNESS. You should NOT watch only one episode from this era, you should and you must watch BOTH “The Speckled Band” and “The Blue Carbuncle,” which may perhaps be Granada’s greatest gift to the fandom. I know it’s almost Easter; but honestly, any time you watch “The Blue Carbuncle,” it’s Christmas. The production values are generally pretty good: Victoriana is everywhere, all the guest stars seem to be bringing their A game, there are more extras running around in this episode than all of the earlier ones combined, and all in all it reminds me pleasantly of another vintage 1980s Christmas special, the George C. Scott A Christmas Carol. But the best thing about this episode is that we get to watch Holmes and Watson have Christmas together in 221B. All y’all who Johnlock and are constantly pining after cozy domestic scenes of the two of them making tea and wearing jumpers together, I just want you to know that “The Blue Carbuncle” has ALL of that, and it is as warm and beautiful and delicious as a slice of plum pudding isn’t.

(In the late 1980s my family moved to London and I had my first traditional English Christmas dinner, and I never got over the disappointment. But I digress.)

Moffat and Gatiss never did an episode based on this one, though they did incorporate Henry Baker’s hat into “The Empty Hearse.” There’s so much more they could have done with it, and which I, in my modest way, tried to do. But maybe they were afraid they couldn’t do it as well as Granada did.

Brett and Burke’s teamwork in this episode is outstanding, and that is probably what I’m going to spend most of my time talking about. But there are some very odd things about “The Blue Carbuncle” as a story that this adaptation doesn’t iron out—most of them relating directly to the blue carbuncle itself.

Keep reading

Happy Holidays everyone! ♥︎♥︎♥︎

Just in time for Festivus Christmas, I present you with yet another list of Holmes adaptations :)