Terry Gilliam Godfathers New Steampunk Spy Movie

This sounds cool.  Variety (via Dark Horizons) reports that Terry Gilliam will serve as "creative advisor" on a new film by his long-time collaborator, digital animation specialist Tim Ollive. The movie, 1884, will tell a Victorian futurist story of espionage and derring-do. It's probably best to rely on the trade's description to convey the typically unique nature of the project: "1884 imagines a film made in 1848 with steam power, narrating a tale of laughable Imperialist derring-do and espionage set in a futuristic 1884 when Europe is at war, steam-powered cars fly in the sky and man has landed on the moon." Furthermore, the trade adds that, "pic will look like animation but in fact mix live-action puppets with CGI heads and actors' filmed eyes and mouths. Backgrounds will feature collages of miniatures, film, graphics and period photography." Hm.  So sort of OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies meets Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow meets Sherlock Holmes meets Gilliam's Brazil?  Maybe?  That's probably attempting to put too much of a label on it.  But it sounds really cool, regardless! I love the odd conceit of making a film as if filmed in 1848 envisioning a futuristic 1884, and laughable Imperialist derring-do (the OSS 117 angle) always appeals to me. Monty Python cast members (not named) will provide the voices.

New Spy DVDs Out This Week (And Last)

There are two very high-profile spy titles of note out this week, from Universal and Criterion. Uni unleashes what's for my money the best spy movie of the year–and best movie, for that matter (so far)–on DVD and Blu-ray: Green Zone.  Hopefully it will do better on home video than it did in theaters.  The generous DVD special features include a commentary with star Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass, deleted scenes, featurettes ("Inside the Green Zone", "Matt Damon: Ready for Action"), and a that stupid digital copy of the film that all the studios are still so crazy about. The Blu-ray release includes all that plus additional BD-Live and U-Control features.  Hopefully more people will discover this amazing action movie on DVD than saw it in the theaters.  As I said in my review, fans of Greengrass's Bourne movies are likely to love Green Zone; the thrust-the-viewer-in-the-thick-of-it action scenes are just as good as those in the awesome Bourne Ultimatum (and far, far superior to Mark Forster's attempt to replicate the style in the lacklustre Quantum of Solace). And, just to be clear, Green Zone is a propulsive spy action movie, not a grim antiwar drama or a political diatribe, as some would suggest. Read my full review of Green Zone here.

As I mentioned just last week, today [er, next Tuesday, that is] also sees the release of one of the terrific spy films of the Forties long absent from DVD, courtesy of The Criterion Collection: Carol Reed's Night Train to Munich, starring Rex Harrison and The Lady Vanish's Margaret Lockwood. Lockwood isn't all that this decidely Hitchcockian comedic thriller has in common with The Lady Vanishes, either.  Besides a train setting, the two movies also share a couple of screenwriters (Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat) and the cricket-loving comic relief characters Charters and Caldicott (Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, who also played the roles in a second feature included on Criterion's Lady Vanishes DVD).  Night Train to Munich (1940) follows Harrison as a dashing British secret agent accompanying a Czech scientist and his daughter across war-torn Europe as they attempt to evade Nazi spies.  Besides the first-rate transfer Criterion is known or, DVD features include a "new video conversation between film scholars Peter Evans and Bruce Babington about director Carol Reed, screenwriters Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, and the social and political climate in which Night Train to Munich was made" and a booklet with an essay by film critic Philip Kemp.

EDIT: Whoops!  Looks like I jumped the gun on this one. I guess that's what happens when you try to sneak in updates while on vacation.  Night Train to Munich isn't out until next week.

There were also a few notable spy releases last week that I didn't get around to posting about. 

Many industry pundits were surprised when Sony opted to forgo theaters and release the Samuel L. Jackson counter-terrorism thriller Unthinkable directly to DVD (and Blu-ray). Despite favorable reviews, however, that's exactly what happened, and here it is.  Jackson plays a counter-terrorism agent who clashes with Carrie-Anne Moss's by-the-book FBI agent when he resorts to torture techniques that would make even Jack Bauer blush when interrogating a terrorist (Michael Sheen) who has planted bombs in multiple American cities.

Anthony Valantine (Callan's psychopathic cohort Toby Meres) takes on an equally rakish but altogether more charming role as the ultimate Victorian anti-hero in Raffles: The Complete Collection, out this week from Acorn Media. Cricketer by day and high society cat burglar Raffles and his partner in crime Bunny were conceived by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law as the anti-Holmes and Watson.  The episodes themselves are Holmsian enough that Raffles would be right at home in an episode of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, but it's lucky for us that he actually got two seasons of his own TV show instead! Naturally, like many of those rivals, Raffles (who was a later member of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) also finds himself dabbling in espionage when he's contracted by Her Majesty's Government to steal some sensitive documents during the second season.  Raffles has been on DVD before (though it's long out of print), but Acorn's collection represents the first time ever that the pilot episode (which proves to be quite good) has been available on home video.  If you like Sherlock Holmes (or, more to the point, perhaps, if you like his Rivals), then you'll probably enjoy Raffles.  If you're not sure, why not check out the pilot as Video On Demand from Amazon?

DVD Review: The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: Set 2

DVD Review: The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: Set 2

Ah, the marvels of DVD! Just two years ago, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes was lost to the world, an intriguing entry on the IMDB with little information available about the production. I’d long cherished Hugh Greene’s collections of short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle’s contemporaries, and was intrigued to see that some of them had been adapted for television. But I didn’t think I’d ever have the chance to see them. Today, thanks to Acorn here in the US and Network in the UK, both seasons of Thames Television’s The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes are now available in their entirety–and what a discovery they are. The first season (which I reviewed twice–the American release here and the British release here) contained some real treasures, and the second is just as good. And, happily for spy fans, the second season contains far more espionage adventures–nearly half of them, in fact! This season draws largely from Greene’s later collection Cosmopolitan Crimes: Foreign Rivals of Sherlock Holmes and consequently the constantly-shifting alliances among the European powers in the decades leading up to WWI and a rising fear of anarchists (the Edwardian equivalent of terrorists) factor heavily in many of the plots. We’re also treated to the only modern film or TV adaptations of two of the founding fathers of the modern spy genre: William Le Queux and E. Phillips Oppenheim.

The Le Queux story, “The Secret of the Fox Hunter,” was the one I was most looking forward to (as his hero Duckworth Drew is widely considered the template for the modern secret service hero), but sadly it turns out to be one of the weaker episodes of the season.

Derek Jacobi (in a weird wig) first appears as William Drew (no mention of “Duckworth”) while posing as a wax figure in a wax museum, taking a secret report from an asset he has placed inside a household where a suspicious Prussian count is staying–a female asset, named Miss Baines. His boss has many misgivings about that.

“I confess,” admits Drew, “it goes against the grain, but we had no choice.”

Using a female operative may go against the grain, but so does the whole business of spying to these very proper gentlemen. The setting may be Edwardian, but they are very Victorian in their outlook. “It’s a beastly underhanded business, Drew,” remarks his oh-so-English boss.

“Uh, quite so,” agrees Drew before heading off himself to the country house where the Prussian is staying, ostensibly for a fox hunt. Also in attendance is a Russian secret agent named Davidoff and a very pretty young woman named Miss Graham who might be a traitor. Drew proves not to be a very good agent runner. After taking the rather extreme precaution before of posing as a wax figure to meet his asset, he now meets with her in open, at a pre-hunt party at the house, risking blowing her cover to everyone in attendance. Miss Baines herself is a bit more progressive in her techniques, and reveals that she has listened to a conversation through a door and discovered a potential Russo-German treaty being discussed. While treaties of this nature were big enough news to be the prevailing MacGuffin of their day, Drew seems more appalled by her behavior. “Miss Baines!” he exclaims. “Was that discreet?”

Drew’s boss proves equally aghast at his ensuing suggestion that they steam open a letter from the suspicious Miss Graham to her fiancé, a young British diplomat posted in St. Petersburg. Clearly, it was a very different secret service back then from the modern CIA or MI5! “Open a letter from a woman to the man she’s about to marry?!” blusters the boss. “Is there no honor left in the world today, Drew?”

“I share your abhorrence of such a course, my lord,” acquiesces Drew, “but if Miss Graham is a traitor, we may yet prevent her from dragging [her fiancé] Bellingham down into disgrace with her.”

“You’re right. For his sake and for the sake of our country we must dispense with scruples.”

There is far more Victorian outrage in “The Secret of the Fox Hunter” than there is action. The rather slow pace is momentarily enlivened by a murder committed with a primitive but devious spy gadget, but even Drew, Baines and Bellingham’s pursuit of Davidoff to Paris lacks the urgency it requires. An alarming ending not from Le Queux’s story may be intended to shock, but the effect is more just to leave an unpleasant aftertaste. So I was disappointed by the Le Queux adaptation I had been so looking forward to, but luckily not by the Oppenheim tale!

The real treasure of this collection has to be “The Secret of the Magnifique,” possibly the only post-war adaptation of an E. Phillips Oppenheim story. Oppenheim was the father of the modern spy story as we know it and the Robert Ludlum of his day, an incredibly prolific thriller writer (dubbed “The Prince of Storytellers” by TIME Magazine). According to “The Rivals and their Creators” text blurb (a low-tech but very welcome DVD extra), “Oppenheim is recognized for popularizing espionage in fiction, paving the way for iconic characters like James Bond. His works were escapist fantasies, featuring luxurious, exotic settings and wealthy protagonists.” He was very popular in the early 20th century and is now–unfairly–relegated to relative obscurity. His works were adapted into more than forty films between 1915 and 1942 (most famously The Great Impersonation, which was filmed three times), and then not at all except for this 1973 television adaptation. And judging from this one, they stand the test of time flawlessly.

“The Secret of the Magnifique” is sort of an Edwardian episode of Mission: Impossible. It begins with a mastermind (a private adventurer rather than government employee, out for personal gain but adhering to a certain moral code–and protecting France from Germany in the process) named J.T. Laxworthy (Bernard Hepton) gathering a group of specialists to aid him in his mission. Well, actually there are only two specialists, but they fill in nicely for Rollin Hand and Willy Armitage. Both are ex-cons, surprised to be met by a coachman upon their release from prison and taken directly to a luxurious apartment. Their mysterious benefactor reveals little about his plan for them, but makes an offer neither can refuse. The ex-cons are the dapper, well-bred Sydney Wing (Licence To Kill’s Christopher Neame) and a working-class safecracker named Anderson. Laxworthy gives them six months to get into their roles as a young society gentleman and his valet, respectively. After that time, they’re to meet him at an upscale resort hotel on the French Riviera.

Here, the set-up is surprisingly GoldenEye-like: a bearded French Admiral in command of a battleship equipped with a special weapon (a torpedo, not a helicopter; it was always torpedoes back then) is staying at a Riviera hotel in the company of a mistress who is really in league with enemy agents. (The similarities are so strong that one wonders if one of the GoldenEye writers was familiar with this story or its TV adaptation.) Into this situation come Laxworthy and his team as well as a nefarious German spy and an easily-manipulated American Pacifist millionaire. Everybody has their own agenda, and Laxworthy’s is only revealed to us–and his employees–at the very end. As with the best episodes in Set 1 of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, I couldn’t help but wish that this had been the pilot for its own series. Oppenheim wrote a whole book of The Adventures of Mr. Laxworthy (quite recently back in print, as a quick Amazon search reveals!), and I would have loved to see this cast realize more of those stories.

“The Moabite Cypher” finds our old friend from the first season, Dr. Thorndyke, taking on an a possible anarchist conspiracy. Only now he looks a lot more like Barrie Ingham than John Neville. I definitely miss Neville’s even-beyond-Holmsian arrogance, but Ingham (who, like Neville, also played Holmes... or a very close rodent approximation as Basil of Baker Street in The Great Mouse Detective) does a perfectly serviceable job in a very entertaining role. His Thorndyke isn’t as rude as Neville’s, nor is his Dr. Jervis (Peter Sallis as Thorndyke’s Watson) as prickly to his rudeness. (Neville provoked his own Jervis to threats of violence!) Ingham does repeat Neville’s best line, though, telling his associate “don’t suck my brain, Jervis, when you have a perfectly good brain of your own,” rather than sharing the brilliant conclusions he’s reached. No brain-sucking is required to deduce that Dr. Thorndyke is the closest analogue of Sherlock Holmes in the bunch, but he’s also a fun character in his own right.

This particular case involves a letter written in the dead language of Moabite on a dead man who was killed by a horse while running from police. The police had spotted a suspicious parcel clutched in his arms (the Edwardian equivalent of... a suspicious parcel) and assumed him to be an anarchist. The parcel turns out to have been harmless, but that doesn’t mean he wasn't an anarchist. Dr. Thorndyke, who happened to be on the scene, keeps a copy of the letter intending to decipher it. Soon after a newspaper intimates that Thorndyke has the letter, Julian Glover turns up at his door playing a man called Barton who wants to pay him lots of money to travel way out to Essex and prove that Barton's brother is being poisoned by his wife. Now, spy fans probably know that it’s never a good thing when Julian Glover turns up at your door (just as James Bond or Indiana Jones, among many others), and Thorndyke surmises as much himself. He quickly concludes that the poisoning story is a ruse to lure him out of his flat, but he allows it to play out, then jumps back onto the train and follows Barton back there. There, Thorndyke's arrogance causes him to get shot, but luckily he’s alright, because the adventure is only just getting started! Before it’s over it will involve anarchists, jewel thieves, hand grenades, fisticuffs, invisible ink and a solution that could be right out of Conan Doyle. “It was so simple,” explains Dr. Thorndyke, a bit too cutely, “it was almost... elementary.” Cute lines aside, this is a top-notch episode.

John Thaw plays the titular Copenhagen police detective in “The Sensible Action of Lt. Holst.” He’s caught between his duty to uphold the law and his obligation to follow orders in a spy story that’s more about the Kafkaesque frustrations of bureaucracy than action or detection. Of course, fans of The Sandbaggers or Queen & Country know well that sometimes bureaucracy can be more exciting than those things anyway. A Russian count and countess both turn up in Copenhagen with contradictory stories. One of them is a revolutionary, and the other is a counter-revolutionary agent of the Tsarist secret police... but which is which? And what will Lt. Holst do when he finds out? His own loyalties may not be in sync with those of his government, bearing in mind that the King of Denmark is a cousin to the Tsar... One of my favorite spy ladies, Catherine Schell, plays a substantial role, but I have to say I prefer her in mod Sixties and Seventies attire to conservative cold weather Edwardian garb!

“The Problem of Cell 13” (or simply “Cell 13” as it’s called here) is not a spy story in the least (nor, even, much of a detective story), but it’s definitely another highlight of this set. The short story on which it’s based (by Jacques Futrelle, who perished on the Titanic) has been a favorite of mine since the 4th Grade, and this was the episode I was second-most looking forward to, after the Duckworth Drew story. And this one, unlike that, does not disappoint, even with the producers’ decision to relocate it from America to Britain, and to Anglicize Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen (better known as “The Thinking Machine,” though that nickname isn’t invoked here). In the tradition of casting once and future Holmeses as the great detective’s rivals (the first set featured both Neville and Robert Stephens), former BBC Sherlock Douglas Wilmer steps into the role and plays it well–with all the arrogance required.

To me, this story has one of the best premises of all time: the renowned professor boasts that no jail is perfectly secure; a smart man (like him) could “think his way out” of any cell. These boasts don’t sit well with the country’s leading prison architect and the governor of his most secure prison (Michael Gough), so they take Van Dusen up on his challenge and bet him that he can’t break out of their most secure cell (you guessed it, 13) in one week. He knows that he can, and it spoils nothing to reveal that he succeeds. (In fact, in the short story’s structure I believe that’s revealed right up front.) The fun comes in how, and I wouldn’t dream of spoiling that! I will say that my favorite moment of the story and the TV episode comes when the warden and guard discover the inevitable fake sleeping body under the covers in his cell. It’s not made of pillows or straw; instead, the professor’s arrogance has compelled him to make it out of things no prisoner should ever have access to, including rope, knives and a gun. How he got that stuff is all part of the thoroughly compelling mystery. It’s a must-see.

Wilmer returns as Van Dusen a few episodes later in the wonderfully-titled “The Superfluous Finger,” which is more of a traditional murder mystery. It doesn’t involve spies, but it does involve Avengers-like eccentrics, lookalikes, rare guns and a castle with a trap door good for dropping uninvited guests directly into the dungeon. Wilmer is just as good at playing Van Dusen the second time around, with just as much arrogance. Besides deductive reasoning, arrogance seems to be the primary trait spread from Sherlock Holmes to his many imitators. But not all of his rivals are arrogant–or upper class.

The hero of “The Looting of the Specie Room,” Horrocks (Ronald Fraser), for example, is a ship’s purser. As such, he’s responsible for a record amount of gold being stored in the specie room of an ocean liner making a transatlantic crossing. The record-obsessed owner of the shipping line is aboard (attempting a new speed record as well as a gold record in the same trip), and immediately considers poor Horrocks the primary suspect when the room is (unsurprisingly, given the title) looted, and the gold stolen. How was it done? The vault was impregnable, and only Horrocks had the key. His first move is to get very drunk and remain that way for a surprising amount of time, before finally setting forth to catch the real culprit. The cool thing about Horrocks is that he’s not a detective (not even an amateur one), so he sets about his investigation–and his prior drunkenness–in more or less the same way you or I would go about it. He must not only contend with an ingenious heist plan (worthy of Jim Phelps), but also nosy, sensationalist reporters, a beautiful suspect and the contempt and derision of his upper-class masters. For his troubles, he earns a knock-out conk on the head that lands him in hospital, but still he persists in his efforts, racing against the ticking clock of port at the end of this record-breaking journey. There may not be any spying in this one, but I loved the cool setting of a luxury liner in 1910.

“Five Hundred Carats” also has a cool setting and just about the lowest-class sort of hero imaginable: turn-of-the-century Kimberly, South Africa, and the uncouth uniformed policeman Inspector Lipinzki. How often in Victorian or Edwardian mysteries do you come across a reasonably intelligent cop on the beat who actually solves the case, and doesn’t just earn the scorn of smarter amateurs? Raised on the bush, Lipinzki is as rough and tumble as they come, and it makes his job harder when the largest diamond ever unearthed by a British mining company is stolen–and murder ensues. All of the suspects are upperclass Englishmen, and for every one of them he interrogates, he must then waste valuable time making public apologies. He knows right away who the villain is, but he can’t prove it and he isn’t allowed to make any allegations or even investigate the man because of his social position. Ultimately, Lipinzki’s paychecks come from the board of directors of the mining company (who run the whole colonial town), and they’re loathe to risk the taint of scandal on any one of their own. The actual method of robbery is again thrilling, depending on the ingenuity of the thief and the very latest technology of the age.

From secret agents to Holmsian detectives to talented amateurs and equally talented professionals to reporters and even (gasp!) women, all of these rivals of Sherlock Holmes are compelling characters solving crimes and thwarting treason in one of the most exciting eras of the genre. The production values don’t seem quite up to those of the first season, but they’re still very impressive for British television of the era. The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes is a wonderful series–and both seasons are well worth picking up. I’m so grateful to Acorn and Network and the medium of DVD that such obscure shows are now right at our fingertips. Anyone who enjoys Sherlock Holmes, good period mysteries or the earliest incarnations of the modern spy genre should definitely check out The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: Set 2.

Read my review of Acorn's The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: Set 1 here.
Read my review of Network's The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: The Complete First Series here.

DVD Review: The Rivals Of Sherlock Holmes: Set 1 (Acorn)

DVD Review: The Rivals Of Sherlock Holmes: Set 1 (Acorn)

No, you’re not experiencing deja vu... This is a brand new review!

No doubt there were lots of jealous Americans reading when I reviewed Network’s Region 2 DVD set of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes earlier this summer. Well, good news, fellow countrymen: the first season of this excellent show is now available on Region 1 DVD courtesy of Acorn Media! And they’ve done a really excellent job with it, too. As I explained when I reviewed the British version, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes was an anthology series produced by Thames Television in the early Seventies based upon the short story anthologies of the same name compiled by Hugh Greene (co-author, with his famous brother Graham, of The Spy’s Bedside Book). Like the books, the show features the adventures of other Victorian and Edwardian detectives written by Arthur Conan Doyle’s contemporaries. Most of these rivals owe a very obvious debt to Doyle’s creation, but the best ones tend to also offer some sort of twist on the formula. The Baroness Orzcy’s Lady Molly of the Yard, for example, is a woman; William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki (Donald Pleasence) hunts ghosts; etc. Every single example is an entertaining variation on the Victorian detective. For a full overview of the premise, please check out my review of the Network set (here), in which I focused largely on one of this season’s most espionage-heavy episodes, "The Case of the Dixon Torpedo." Rather than re-treading ground already covered, I will discuss entirely different episodes in my review of the American DVDs. Rest assured, however, that both sets feature every episode from the first season of the show.

While it would be hard to give a Victorian detective a bigger handicap than Lady Molly’s gender (given the era and its prevailing attitudes), writer Ernest Bramah gave it a shot by making his Holmsian hero blind. "The Missing Witness Sensation" showcases future Sherlock Holmes (in Billy Wilder’s espionage-oriented The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes) Robert Stephens (father of Bond villain Toby Stephens) as sightless sleuth Max Carrados in the season’s second spy-themed story. Carrados functions like a nineteenth century version of Marvel Comics’ Daredevil: a blind man who has developed his other senses so acutely as to almost fully make up for his lack of vision. Carrados is so proud of overcoming his handicap that he’s constantly showing off–even moreso than Sherlock Holmes. This incurable vanity gets him into trouble more than once, and even gets him captured by a local cell of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

While writer Phillip Mackie occasionally resorts to voiceover describing what Carrados "sees" with his ears and his nose, Stephens does a great job of conveying his character’s handicap without ever making it seem like anything more than a mild inconvenience. Stephens plays the detective very flamboyantly, foreshadowing the way he will play Holmes. Even in the face of death, he can’t resist demonstrating his superior mental powers to those around him. Carrados spends a good part of the episode as a prisoner of the Irish nationalists (though curiously doesn’t grow any facial hair over his lengthy period of imprisonment) and becomes close to the woman in their ranks who lured him into this trap by pretending to be blind herself. His predicament is somewhat similar to Jacques Futrelle’s classic story "The Problem of Cell 13" (itself adapted in the second season of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes), in that Carrados must think his way out of prison. While the entire plot depends a little too much on a complete coincidence, everything comes together in an extremely satisfying manner. It’s great to see how Carrados has managed to remain several steps ahead of everyone else (including, of course, the police, in the form of his friend Inspector Beedle) despite his incarceration.

The Network set offered no bonus features. Acorn’s set doesn’t offer many, but the one that it does offer is an extremely welcome one, however low-tech. In a section called "The Rivals & Their Creators," there are text biographies on each detective and the writer or writers behind him (or her). This simple inclusion proves essential for students of the genre who would like to learn more about the characters. While watching the UK discs I frequently turned to my paperbacks to read Greene’s introductions, but this is far more convenient and concise. And, in some cases, even more informative! Without the text features, I probably wouldn’t have figured out that detectives Jonathan Pryde and Martin Hewitt were actually one and the same. In the TV series, they’re presented as partners. Each one gets a solo case (name-checking his absent partner) and they both appear in "The Case of Laker, Absconded." However, according to "Rivals & Creators," Jonathan Pryde does not appear in author Arthur Morrison’s short stories. Presumably he was created for TV because the producers didn’t want their anthology series to rely too heavily on Peter Barkworth’s Martin Hewitt. That information came as a bit of a shock to me as Pryde (Ronald Hynes) was probably my favorite detective in the batch! (He is the star of "The Case of the Dixon Torpedo," reviewed earlier.) Barkworth, however, is quite good as well, playing the real Martin Hewitt in "The Affair of the Tortoise."

Hewitt is in many ways the anti-Holmes. Whereas Sherlock is a cold fish all around, Hewitt is warm and sociable. Unlike Holmes (and some of his rivals, especially John Neville’s Dr. Thorndyke), Hewitt is never rude or petulant. He goes out of his way to be nice to everyone. Both of them are good detectives, although Hewitt relies a bit more on doggedly following down every possible lead than on making brilliant deductions in his head. If you were a client and you had to consult with one of them, you would probably prefer the company of Hewitt.

In "The Affair of the Tortoise," Hewitt stumbles upon his latest case while concluding another. He’s just tracked down a young woman to tell her she’s come into a large fortune thanks to a forgotten relative, recently deceased, and he’s clearly attracted to her. (Another stark contrast to Holmes!) Therefore, he’s quick to help her when she complains about her obnoxious, drunken neighbor, Monsieur Rameau (Stefan Kalipha, whose guest appearance on Callan I singled out and is equally impressive here). Rameau terrorizes the building with his drunken caterwauling and mean-spirited practical jokes. He’s soon murdered, and his body vanishes. The kindly caretaker (and brunt of most of Rameau’s jokes) is the chief suspect, and the young woman hires Hewitt to prove him innocent.

The presence of any Hatian character in Victorian fiction generally means the presence of Voodoo, and this case is no different. The Voodoo element makes for a good, exciting story complete with Voodoo doll (always accompanied by drums on the soundtrack, of course) and an expert in the occult. This expert is the proprietor of a curio shop that stocks everything from antiques to a triceratops skull, making it a very interesting setting.

Unlike many of the detectives on this series, Hewitt gets along with well with the police inspector, Nettings, who happily lets him look around in case he finds something the police overlooked. When one character snidely remarks, "Usual story, I suppose. Police baffled? Sorry state of affairs I must say," the indignant Nettings declares "I am not baffled!" Of course he is, and at the end he concedes to Hewitt that "I seem to have made a lot of mistakes on this case."

But Hewitt, ever considerate, is understanding. "Your mind can’t be expected to work at concert pitch all the time, Inspector," he consoles him.

Hewitt returns in "The Case of Laker, Absconded," following a trail of clues leading to a bank clerk who has supposedly absconded with £15,000. Pryde is on board this time as well, and after "The Case of the Dixon Torpedo" I was looking forward to his return. Unfortunately, he has little more to do than occasionally offering his partner very competent assistance. Hewitt again gets to demonstrate how extraordinarily nice he is, forming a fast friendship with the absconded clerk’s fiancé who accompanies him in the course of his inquiries. He also gets to go undercover as a meter reader for the gas company, and even turns up the charm to seduce a maid! The solution to the case depends on Pryde’s decoding of a classified ad the audience isn’t privy to, but it’s still a very enjoyable journey. The rather unconvincing snowy exteriors, however, reveal a slightly tighter budget than I would have guessed based on the other, fairly lavish, productions.

Not all of the rivals are as kindhearted as Martin Hewitt. Horace Dorrington, for instance (played with a Steedish charm by Peter Vaughn, memorable from his guest appearances on The Persuaders!, The Avengers, The Saint and other classic spy shows) is a downright nasty piece of work. He’s by far the most unscrupulous private detective of the bunch, and really more of an outright scoundrel than a hero. It’s all about money for him, and he’s not above fencing the items that he recovers himself it that nets him a greater profit than returning them to his clients. And despite a perpetual smile, he’s not nice to anyone, including those clients–and his employees. He’s also the only one of the bunch to pull a gun on people. (Not very sporting, what?) Despite his thorough lack of morals, though, Dorrington is actually quite a good detective. He follows leads and discovers clues and even makes brilliant connections. He just uses his conclusions to further his own ends. The "Rivals & Creators" text piece has some interesting things to say about the character. "Handsome and muscular, Dorrington often uses charm to obtain trust, create a ruse and dishonestly make a profit.... Overall, Dorrington was perceived [by Victorian audiences] more as an accomplished criminal than as a trustworthy and effective detective." That sounds about right.

It’s worth noting (Acorn’s copy on the box makes a big deal of it, in fact) that a very young Jeremy Irons makes his first screen appearance in one of the Horace Dorrington episodes, "The Mirror of Portugal." It’s a very small part (credited only as "Nephew") as a Bertie Woosterish dolt who makes exclamations like, "What larks, eh?" Despite this novelty and despite Vaughn’s impressive performance, it’s actually kind of hard to watch an episode centering on such a thoroughly unlikable, downright despicable individual.

Roy Dotrice, however, proves that not every villain need be so unlikable in "The Duchess of Wiltshire’s Diamonds!" Dotrice is gentleman thief Simon Carne, who disguises himself as the aged, celebrated detective Klimo. As an upstanding member of London society, Carne sports a false humpback. While he admits that this phony deformity sometimes gets in the way of his love life, it’s very convenient in throwing any suspicion off of him. How could a humpback possibly pose as Klimo–or anyone else? The episode spends an awfully long time showing Dotrice applying his Klimo facial disguise in real time. I suppose the intent was to show that it can be done, but the scene is a little boring. Carne’s got some great gadgets, including a desk in his study that rotates from his townhouse apartment into Klimo’s adjoining one! He has a different servant in each residence, each of whom is in on the con.

Despite being a rogue, Carne is not nasty like Dorrington. It’s easy to root for him and his Jeeves-like butler to pull off their elaborate heist against high society members who can more than afford to lose their diamonds. It’s also fun to watch him bamboozle the police, intentionally making asses out of them like Diabolik. And despite the seemingly overcomplicated setup, the heist itself is a whole lot of fun, with lots of twists and misdirects.

All of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes are thoroughly entertaining, from the crooks and the cads to the earnest do-gooders to the amateur spies to the snide, petulant misanthropes. Victorian fiction was awash with all sorts of gems of this sort, and the TV series does as good a job as Greene’s original anthologies at unearthing them. I can’t believe that television this good has remained unseen for so many decades! Anyone who’s remotely into Sherlock Holmes or his period should rejoice in this release and make a point of seeking it out. Personally, I can’t wait for Set 2!

Read more about The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes in my review of the British DVDs here.

New Spy DVDs Out This Week

First up, Americans now have the chance to own The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: Set 1, out today from Acorn Media! I reviewed this teriffic series earlier this year when Network released a Region 2 version in the UK; I'll have an entirely new review of the US version up later today. But the episodes included are exactly the same, and the American version actually offers a nice bonus feature not included on the R2 discs. "The Case of the Dixon Torpedo" should be of particular interest to spy fans, as it dramatises (in fine fashion!) what surely must be one of the earliest examples of the modern spy story in the "reluctant agent" subgenre made popular by Len Deighton. "The Missing Witness Sensation" also deals with matters of national security, and other episodes feature notable veterans of Sixties spy TV and film. Foremost among them, You Only Live Twice's Blofeld, Donald Pleasence, plays William Hope Hodgson's ghost-hunting detective Carnacki in "The Horse of the Invisible." This one's a must for Holmes fans, and should prove of interest to modern spy fans as well. It's considerably cheaper on DeepDiscount than on Amazon.

Warner Bros. continues releasing rare catalog titles through their "DVD on demand" Warner Archive program, and today's batch includes an intriguing spy title: Berlin Express (1948). According to Warner Bros., the setting of the film is "as riveting as the action: Berlin Express was the first American movie filmed in post-World War II Germany. Director Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, Out of the Past [and, of course, Night of the Demon) and cinematographer Lucien Ballard (The Wild Bunch) capture the ruin of a bombed and devastated nation that just a few years earlier threatened to rule the world." They describe the story of four train passengers who must thwart a Nazi-backed assassination plot as "a tense espionage thriller." Berlin Express stars Robert Ryan, Merle Oberon and Paul Lukas. As a sucker for train movies, I'm certainly intrigued by this one! Berlin Express is available exclusively through the Warner Archive site.