The Bruce Partington Plans

I recall looking forward to this episode. It would feature Charles Gray as Mycroft Holmes. I remember the character being played by Christopher Lee in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.

The episode begins with a bored Holmes, lamenting on the lack of crime in London. Mycroft calls on his brother on a matter of national importance. Confidential designs on a secret submarine project have gone missing. A government clerk, Cadogan West has been found dead. He is the likely suspect for the theft. His body was found next to the railway line with some pages of the plans on his body.

Holmes needs to visit all the people who had the keys to the safe where the plans were stored. One of whom has subsequently died before Holmes can get to talk to him.

Of course Holmes soon realises that there is more to this theft as it points towards international espionage. The clerk it seems was killed elsewhere and his body placed on the railway.

This is a more thoughtful case and it needs more deductions from Holmes. It also involves Holmes breaking and entering. Gray was an imposing Mycroft and would go on to appear a few more times as Mycroft, mainly as cover for an ill Jeremy Brett.

I was surprised that of all the Sherlock Holmes stories that they would make "The Bruce Partington Plans". After all, they filmed two similar previous stories with Jeremy Brett ("The Naval Treaty" and "The Second Stain")...all about missing state secrets or treaties.

The story begins with something only a state problem could accompany...Mycroft coming to 221B Baker Street to see his brother, Sherlock. This also happened with "The Naval Treaty".... Mycroft leaving his sanctuary of the Diogenes Club. It seems a man was found dead...and with some state secrets on his body. But some of the stolen documents are still missing...such as the plans for a revolutionary submarine.

This is a decent but very familiar episode. Worth seeing but one that is easy to mix up with the other two similar stories. Well done apart from that.

A young copyist is found dead beside the railway lines on the Underground with a massive head wound but little bleeding. He has no ticket but he does have plans for the Bruce-Partington submarine in his pocket. Is he a traitor? How did he board the train without a ticket? Who killed him and why, or was it an accident?

It's well that "The Bruce Partington Plans" is the finale of "The Return of Sherlock Holmes," which has such fine episodes as "The Man With The Twisted Lip," "The Abbe Grange" and "The Second Stain." And Freddie Jones' delightful performance in the otherwise lackluster "Wisteria Lodge." It's a worthy climax.

Brett by this time has developed that delivery problem that makes him sound like he suffers from a perpetual head cold, but it's not eggregious here.

The episode opens with the reintroduction of Charles Gray as Mycroft. I was never sold on Gray's Mycroft; Gray's been too common in movies and TV to be definitive in the way Brett, Burke, Hardwicke and Jeavons are. But he and Brett seem to enjoy acting together, which gives them that glow of brothers who aren't terribly close but who are always glad to see each other.

The story is one if Holmes' triumphs of detection. It's a bit of a shame Lestrade couldn't join us; no doubt Jeavons' schedule precluded it. Amanda Waring is affecting and she does her best with lines like, "if you could only save his honor," which rings so hollow in a more cynical age where honor is treated as a joke.

They do a good job to keep anyone who hasn't read the story guessing at the culprit, making even the ticket-seller at the station a suspicious character.

This is one of those Brett/Holmes stories so delicious one doesn't need to go back to ACD to enjoy it as it should be enjoyed. It's good (enough) as an adaptation and it stands up alone on its own merits.

BTW, the story contains one of ACD's greatest howlers, where Mycroft says the submarine is one of Britain's most closely guarded secrets but then is astounded his brother hasn't heard of it. But his brother is Sherlock Holmes the omniscient. My brother wasn't even Lestrade.

Apart from that, this is a beautiful story beautifully told, unlike some of the travesties like "The Six Napoleons," which should have been left untampered with (though, to be fair, tampering with "The Priory School" improved it).

As people may well know by now, I am a big fan of the Granada Sherlock Holmes series. As far as the episodes in The Return of Sherlock Holmes go, I still think The Devil's Foot is the standout of this particular series, but The Bruce-Partington Plans is one of those episodes that shows why I love the series as much as I do.

The pace is mostly solid, if dragging a tad once or twice. That said, the story is an interesting and well-told one, and is further helped by the thoughtful dialogue, the meticulous production values(one of the series' best assets), the wonderful music and the top notch acting of Jeremy Brett, Edward Hardwicke and Charles Gray.

All in all, a great episode. 9/10 Bethany Cox

I'm interested in Holmes because he changed the nature of narrative, a revolution every bit as significant as the invention of human rights. I'm interested as well because he reflects an odd battle we haven't settled and probably won't: the battle between those who believe in the supernatural and the other extreme, that all behavior and especially human behavior is rational. Its a fascinating war that we all see ourselves in somehow.

And I'm interested in Holmes because it is almost a perfect textbook case of the challenges of mapping the core notions of the literary to the cinematic. Well, other authors would be more interesting, but this one is so well known...

But I don't find the stories themselves that much fun. The much advertised Holmes method of deduction is often tossed and we have disguises, what today would be called footwork by the Baker Street irregulars, and traps. (This story has more actual deduction than most.) Of all the Holmes stories, the one feature that I love is the usually invisible brother, Mycroft. He's seven years senior and very much Holmes' superior in logic. He's as far from Holmes in talent as Holmes is from Watson, our designated ordinary man. He's obese and never leaves his comfortable chair at the Diogenes Club, where he entertains a stream of needy supplicants including his brother. Imagine Orson Welles.

He's an amazing character. He's in this story. He's not impressive or interesting here.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.