SERIES - Sherlock Holmes

TITLE - The Adventure of the Original Hamlet

DATE - 2 Nov 1946

NETWORK - ABC

NOTES -
"Suggested by an incident" in The Final Problem
Joseph Bell is announcer again

RATING -

COMMENTS - 6

Holmes finds himself on the trail of the Ur-Hamlet here, explaining that it's the priceless, lost original version of Shakespeare's play, written by Thomas Kyd. It's an interesting novelty to hear Sherlock Holmes attempting to unravel this famous real-life literary mystery, but not all the elements of the story necessarily work as well as they could. Holmes seems to pull a lot if his deductions out of thin air, or from insufficient evidence. The worst is when based on a very vague description of a supposed ghost he determines that it must without question be a disguised Professor Moriarty!

Nonetheless the script is quite a witty one this time, not taking itself too seriously as it gets a number of funny lines in -- notably Watson delivering a pining monologue in which he eventually declares "I'd quite like to be an idiot!"

This is the fourth radio episode to star Tom Conway as Holmes, after he replaced the very popular Basil Rathbone. Nigel Bruce as Watson, who remained from the Rathbone films and radio series, gets star billing and perhaps more of the story than usual. It's Watson that first learns of the mystery and then takes it to Holmes. Conway does have a voice that sounds like Rathbone, but he isn't as good in my opinion. He seems to be trying too hard to sound heroic instead of acting, stumbling over his words rather frequently.