The Hound of the Baskervilles (1)

This visceral adaptation by Allan Cubitt, directed by David Attwood, has a beautiful cinematic quality and a terrific pace. In striking contrast to previous versions of the story, Holmes and Watson (Richard Roxburgh and Ian Hart) are portrayed as young and athletic men in their mid-thirties, supposedly closer to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original vision. When we first see them, they're wandering out of a sauna wearing only towels! The hound itself is created for the first time using state of the art animatronics and animation and therefore appears, at last, as the monstrous vision it really should be. While there is much in this production to commend it, I personally find Roxburgh's performance a major disappointment. His vision of Holmes is so unmemorable, guest stars John Nettles and Richard E. Can't, as Mortimer and Stapleton, steal the film. First shown on 26/12/2002.