sherlock60 | Granada Discussion Post: The Master Blackmailer

Let's talk telly in the discussion post for Granada's TV adaptation of Charles Augustus Milverton, called The Master Blackmailer. If you haven't seen this episode yet, you can find it at YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Video, and DVD. Follow me behind the jump for my random thoughts and impressions. Please add your own in the comments!

Canon discussion for Charles Augustus Milverton is available in this week's canon discussion post.

- The Master Blackmailer is a bit of a pale version of a thrilling story. That is not to say it is bad, exactly, but that it is missing some of the things that make the canon story, Charles Augustus Milverton, so special. At full movie-length, every scene feels about twice as long as it needs to be, while the ACD story is tight and swift. The edge of the blade conversation at the end with Inspector Lestrade is totally lost, leading instead to an odd, only semi-intelligible ending that still manages to sort of just peter out. But the worst loss is in the argument about the burglary. Why did they cut it before Watson insists on going whether Holmes likes it or not? That is the entire point of the argument, and to remove it is to render it bloodless and cold. Where is the friendship? Where is the loyalty, the shared sense of adventure? Watson goes along with it anyway here, so why not include that bonding moment between them? We had time for multiple plumbing scenes and half a drag cabaret but not this?

- There are definitely good things to be highlighted, whatever the shortcomings. The gay subplot is surprisingly well-handled given the time in which it was filmed. Of course the gay characters end up either villains or dead, but it was the early '90s, and that was the best we could do then. We were lucky to have gay characters on screen at all, and Colonel Dorking turned out to be quite sympathetic and compelling. His death hurts. Also excellent is the incredible creepiness about Milverton himself. Robert Hardy plays him as an entirely unsettling creature, slithering through endless slimy encounters. Is it possible not to squirm when he touches the little girl's face on Baker Street? I am shuddering just thinking of it. And did you notice the monogram on his carriage is his initials written in snakes? Nice touch.

- I like Watson's theory that Milverton walls himself off in distant isolation because he was raised deprived of human affection and now cannot tolerate it in any form. He can't live somewhere like Soho, as Holmes suggests for him, because that is a place of vice, which means it teems with warmth, generosity of spirit and humanity. That's a fascinating little bit of psychology from the doctor. But did you see Holmes' creeping discomfort during the discussion? As Watson is going on about a boy raised in lonely isolation and starved of affection, he winces but tries weakly to smile it off. It fails. The truth cut a little close to the bone on that one. Great tiny piece of character acting by Jeremy Brett there.

- And of course, then there's Aggie, the drunken housemaid, "Ralph Escott", and their awkward courtship. I hesitate to call it a romance, but I suppose it was intended as such. When I realized that Aggie is just drunk all day, every day, suddenly her random attraction to Holmes in shoddy plumber's costume made much more sense. But it didn't make it any more comfortable, which I know was part of the point. Holmes is forced into a semi-physical relationship with a woman, a situation he finds intensely foreign and disconcerting. When she asks for a kiss, he admits, "I don't know how." He may really not, which is interesting in its own way, if not an appropriate thing to mention in character. "Are you a burglar?" she asks when he presses for information. He chooses that moment for Escott to tell Aggie how much she has touched his heart. It's abrupt and bizarre, a blatant last ditch effort to change the subject, although Aggie seems too drunk to notice, happily rolling on top of him. I guess I just expected Sherlock Holmes to be a better actor.