Someone at our church lent us a collection of TV episodes starring Ronald Howard as Sherlock Holmes. I had heard of this series before and had never heard anything negative about it, so I was quite looking forward to watching it. :)
The series is from the '50s; each episode is in B&W and about 25 or 30 minutes long. The plots and settings vary significantly; some of them are partly based on the original stories, and some are not. Personally, I'm not a purist when it comes to the Sherlock Holmes plots/settings; plus, in this series it all takes place in Victorian London, so that was cool. I loved the humour and suspense, as well as the fact that many aspects of the originals (Holmes's chemistry experiments, violin-playing, disguises, etc) were still there. I was sad to see that Mrs Hudson wasn't in any of them. On the other hand, Lestrade and Watson are in all of them. I really liked this Watson; granted, he gets upset a lot and doesn't try to figure things out for himself very much, but (overall) that's better than making him look really dumb, like in other versions.
Howard is an excellent Holmes. As opposed to Rathbone, Brett, and Cumberbatch, Howard's portrayal is very cheerful, charming, eccentric, and benevolent. Though he still solves cases with his talents of observation and deduction, you never see him in a bad mood or "pocketing a fee". It certainly brings out a different side of Holmes, but every portrayal does; and while it may not be quite as true to the books as it could be, it's still a worthy portrayal. The only thing that really bothers me is when, in this series, Holmes (in disguise, sort of) is pretending to be romantic. He's so convincing that it's kind of creepy. :P
Like most B&W films, this was pretty family-friendly; we all looked forward to watching it every evening, and we all loved the theme music. :) By the way, I recommend starting with the episode called "The Cunningham Heritage", because that's the one in which Watson first meets Holmes.
Recommended for fans of Sherlock Holmes and/or B&W movies. Even if you don't know much about Holmes, I would still recommend it!
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