Sherlock Holmes Baffled
"Sherlock Holmes Baffled" marks the first in an observable trend of early film-makers to show the character as a figure of fun; in this case the somewhat louchely dressed Holmes is left "baffled" by a burglar, in contrast with the detective prowess displayed by his literary namesake. William K. Everson in his book "The Detective in Film" noted that "Sherlock Holmes Baffled", in common with all other silent detective films "labored under the difficulty of not being able to conduct prolonged interrogations or oral deductions ... the stress was on mystery or physical action rather than on literary-derived sleuthings." It was only in 1916 that William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" attempted a serious adaptation of Conan Doyle's character. Michael Pointer has suggested that the appearance and costume of the anonymous actor in "Sherlock Holmes Baffled" is an imitation of Gillette's stage portrayal of Holmes. Gillette's play "Sherlock Holmes" had made its Broadway debut at the Garrick Theater on November 6, 1899.
Sherlock Holmes (2014 TV series)
Following the broadcast of "The Three Musketeers" from 2009 to 2010, Kōki Mitani planned to adapt "The Brothers Karamazov" to a puppetry. Despite his love for the stories of Sherlock Holmes, Mitani was reluctant to adapt the series into puppetry due to the difficulty in describing the details of investigations through the operation of puppets. He also worried that it was too late to produce a Sherlock Holmes series as "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" gained popularity and the modern adaptation "Sherlock" had already received a reputation. Then he planned to make a puppet with the spitting image of Sherlock Holmes drawn by Sidney Paget but abandoned the idea as tall puppets are difficult for puppeteers to operate. Mitani then decided to make it a show set in a fictional boarding school called "Beeton School" with Sherlock Holmes as a fifteen-year-old schoolboy. Though many incidents occur in the school, there are no murders and the same puppets appear many times. According to Mitani, as the story progresses it will be revealed to viewers the full picture of why the show is set in a school. All four novels of the canon – "A Study in Scarlet", "The Sign of the Four", "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and "The Valley of Fear" – are dramatised in the puppetry, which Mitani says may be the first case among screen adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle's work.