Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43562 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-02-25
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 104 minutes

Amazon.com
A little overextended as a two-hour movie, this installment in Granada Television's long-running Sherlock Holmes series was one of several such feature-length productions made late (1992) in the enterprise. Based on the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor," The Eligible Bachelor finds Holmes (the ailing Jeremy Brett, playing an increasingly darker and more neurotic detective) and Dr. Watson (Edward Hardwicke) called upon to help in a case involving the disappearance of Henrietta Doran (Paris Jefferson), fiancée of the noble Lord Robert St. Simon (Simon Williams), who was last seen with a former lover of St. Simon's, Flora Millar (Joanna McCallum). The unimaginative Scotland Yard instantly arrests Millar on suspicion of foul play, but it is Holmes who has to find the missing woman. Fans of the entire series might best enjoy this slightly clunky program, though there is much of interest about Brett's performance to recommend it. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

A masterpiece of the time
This film left me cliff- hanging. The first time I watched it I couldn't go anywhere. I stayed right in front of my TV and watched. It is a confusing story for there are many people but they all connect in the end. Brett is one of my favorite people to play Sherlock Holmes. This is a treasure.

A masterpiece of the macabre
This adaptation extends far beyond the boundaries of the story it is based on, The Noble Bachelor. It does so brilliantly, serving as a fascinating character study of Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett), as well as a hallucinatory gothic mystery-drama. Holmes actually ventures off from his religion of rational thinking, to sketch his bizarre dreams. Simultaneously, the background of Lord Robert (the eligible bachelor), Hetty, Maude, Helena and Flora unfolds. This film is a feast for the senses. Miasmic fog swirls throughout the dirty London streets, drunkards laugh madly with an overlay of dreamy music. Holmes and Watson must cut through the vices of the underbelly of Victorian society in order to find the missing Hetty, release Flora Miller, and expose the evil deeds of the eligible bachelor. Revenge finally reconciles the atrocities, and Holmes discovers the prophetic nature of his dreams. Devotees of Sherlock Holmes and gothic period works will love this film!

Blatant rubbish
I am giving this film an extra star out of respect for actors Brett and Hardwicke, and for a few of the looney, arty camera shots that are used to conjure a bizarre tone for this overlong "Sherlock Holmes" story. However, there is good bizarre and there is bad bizarre. Good bizarre, as in other Brett/Holmes films such as "Wisteria Lodge" and "The Golden Pince-Nez," use unusual cinematography to add to the story's fun rather than distract from it. Bad bizarre, such as this mess, has no fun in it to begin with, and falls back on weird, disturbing images to compensate. For many years Jeremy Brett played the great sleuth with neurotic panache in well-made, tight, amusing films that stayed very close to the Conan Doyle stories on which they were made. Unfortunately, in Brett's declining years they put this fine actor in three stinkers ("The Master Blackmailer," "The Last Vampyre," and this, the worst of the lot) that took perfectly good Doyle stories and tried to drag them out to two hour epics by padding them with a lot of extra crap by modern screenwriters, all of whom for some reason decided that late Victorian London should be shown as an extremely squalid place filled with cackling hags, drunks, weird spectacled psychotics, suicidal gays, and Holmes himself going to pieces, sobbing and simpering most unlike the Holmes we all know and love. In keeping with the style of many television films of this era, this one seems jumpy, quick-cut, and random. After several scenes that each last all of five seconds, I begin to wonder where on earth the art of storytelling has gone. This overwrought bummer of a movie is best forgotten, and those wishing to enjoy a great Sherlock Holmes mystery might best go and watch "The Sign of Four," another long, bizarre story that has all the good qualities this one lacks: humor, plot, faithfulness to Doyle, fine production, and a great sleuth.