FemaleFirst.co.uk: DVD: Murder Rooms - The Dark Beginnings Of Sherlock Holmes [DVD] [2000]

Murder Rooms - The Dark Beginnings Of Sherlock Holmes [DVD] [2000]
enlarge	Director: Paul Seed Actors: Ian Richardson, Sean Wightman, Robin Laing, Dolly Wells, Charles Dance Studio: Mosaic Movies Category: DVD Buy Used: £54.90 as of 24/11/2009 07:16 GMT details Seller: g515tfl Rating: 7 reviews Sales Rank: 19664 Format: PAL, Widescreen Language: English (Original Language) Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over Region: 2 Discs: 1 Number Of Discs: 1 Running Time: 102 Minutes Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2 Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6 EAN: 7321900938532 ASIN: B00008IART Theatrical Release Date: May 18, 2000 Release Date: March 24, 2003 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days


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Customer Reviews: Showing reviews 1-5 of 7 1 2 Next » behind the great detective October 8, 2009 Susan Belcher (St Helens, England) 20 out of 20 found this review helpful This is the story of a young medical student called Arthur Conan Doyle - Doyle became famous as the creator of one of the most famous fictional detectives of all time - Sherlock Holmes. br / br /Doyle (Robin Lang) sneaks into the Stand Magazine to escape the uproar that followed the "death" of the character Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls. As he sits in the Editor's office he starts to tell the story of the influences on his life that led to the creation of Holmes. br / br /The film is pertains to how Doyle met the man who would be the inspiration for Holmes and how he influenced Doyle's future. br / br /Doyle first meets Dr Joseph Bell (the late Ian Richardson) when he is beating a corpse with a cane to see what reaction the corpse would have if it suffered injury after death. After the initial shock Doyle becomes Bell's assistant, in his research and in his investigations. br / br /However, this is a dramatisation and not the true story of Doyle and Bell. For example, Doyle never attended university with Thomas Neill Cream - called only Thomas Neill in the film (an alias he had used in real life); Doyle attended Edinburgh University 1876-1881 - Thomas Neill Cream attended McGill University (Montreal, Canada) and then studied medicine at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, London in 1876. br / br /The story also includes the struggle of woman who wished to be doctors. br / br /Richardson is sublime as Bell, it is a shame that he only appeared as Sherlock Holmes twice Sherlock Holmes - The Hound of Baskervilles Sign of Four [ 1983 ]) as he has the brusque manner you expect of Holmes down pat. br / br /It is a great yarn and a well made film, which lead to a short lived TV series - only 4 other episodes were made before it was cancelled (it may have been something to do with it being shoved in a late evening spot on BBC2). br / WONDERFUL!!!!! October 17, 2001 D. Pyke (uk) 11 out of 11 found this review helpful All I have to say about this movie can be encapsulated in one word.....wonderful!!!!!!brBuy it now.....and then buy the other four in the series when they are released. Also, if they can find an actor who can hold off the ghost of the late and very much missed Jeremy Brett (Alan Rickman perhaps), I would love to see the producers get their teeth into some proper Holmes stories.brMarvellous stuff!!!!! fantastic adaptation of mysterious origin October 20, 2000 chugi@fsmail.net (northampton, england) 8 out of 8 found this review helpful At last a detailed account of one of the worlds greatest ever crime writers. Great hints of simple but intense deduction, wonderfully portrayed by Ian Richardson as Dr Joseph Bell. The Strand magazine would be honoured! A must for all Sherlock Holmes fans!! May 14, 2002 17 out of 19 found this review helpful Pilot Episode - Set in the back drop of Edinburgh in 1878, Murder Rooms follows the early life of Arthur Conan Doyle (Robin Laing) - a humble medical student dealing with conflicting interests of university and home life (he is coming to terms with his father's mental illness). The story unfolds with Doyle's fortuitous meeting with his tutor Dr Bell (Ian Richardson). . . although Doyle openly questions the Doctor's methods as trickery in a lecture, Bell takes him on as an assistance - this is when Doyle's 'powers' of deduction begin to form! Bell leads the way by investigating several mysterious deaths occurring in Edinburgh and Doyle is drawn into this 'underworld' when he becomes puzzled by the suspicious death of a healthy street fiddler (and a pile of coins left beside the body). Young Doyle is more ruled by passions of the heart rather than the logic of his head and often makes mistakes with hasty actions...but Dr Bell corrects him with his 'methods' - ones which Doyle himself adopts later on. At university, he befriends a young female student Elspeth (Dolly Wells) and despite certain male students opposing the education of women, Doyle willingly supports her. When Dr Bell is called to examine the health of her sister, Lady Carlyle, young Doyle and Elspeth are drawn further together... brOverall, Murder Rooms is about Doyle's 'dark beginnings', which eventually affect his later life and writing. The writer, David Pirie, cleverly entwines many of the 'methods' that are familiar to Sherlock Holmes readers and also incorporates Doyle's 'chivalric' side (he wrote several medieval romances such as 'Sir Nigel'). A superb cast (includes Charles Dance) and an excellent script keep you gripped to the very end . . . it will appeal to both young (late teens) and older viewers - for the former, Doyle is wonderfully played by newcomer Robin Laing and Elspeth by Dolly Wells. (A word of warning...although Murder Rooms continues as a series with more thrilling exploits of young Doyle, alas we are left wondering why the young actor - Laing- has been replaced?) brOf course many of us miss seeing 'Sherlock Holmes' on television (especially with Jeremy Brett in the lead), but this is a welcome alternative. Murder Rooms is well worth buying because the plot is full of twists and surprises that you will want to watch it again and again!!! "It is to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes." November 18, 2009 Trevor Willsmer (London, England) David Pirie's inspired mystery examines the seeds of Arthur Conan Doyle's greatest fictional creation by examining his relationship with the brilliant surgeon and pathologist Dr Joseph Bell when Doyle was a young medical student, imagining the two investigating a series of murders that prefigure the Jack the Ripper killings and reveal both the dark underside of Victorian society and Doyle's own troubled family background. A champion of applying the deductive reasoning he used for diagnoses to criminal cases at a time when detection was still anything but a science, Bell did often lend his expertise to the Edinburgh police, and while there's no evidence that he and Doyle ever formed a Holmes and Watson relationship, the drama is never less than entirely convincing. Both central characters are well drawn, and the instances where scenes foreshadow fictional incidents from the Holmes stories are often beautifully handled, with the moment where - just as Holmes did in A Study in Scarlet - Bell inadvertently shames Doyle's by revealing far more of his personal problems by simply examining a watch than the student would like a particular standout. It's typical of the way that the show manages to incorporate not just the personal (the details of Doyle's mentally ill father are based in fact) and the fictional but also offers a wider portrait of a society whose rigid social order hides dark secrets. It's psychologically astute, aware of the temptations to self-harm or violence - the evil imp urging us to move ever closer to the cliff's edge or to harm the helpless, as one fellow medical student puts it - and the way a repressed, absolute set of values can sometimes act to encourage the very breakdown of order and propriety they try to prevent. br / br /It's a vividly realised society too, from the drawing rooms of the outwardly respectable but inwardly diseased aristocracy to the brothels and back streets at a time when women - only recently granted the right to higher education - are regarded more as property or ornaments. Certainly the tale lives up to the promised darkness in the title. Aside from murder and a doomed romance, there's mental illness, VD and a lot of blood once the story graduates from a typical locked room mystery that introduces the practical applications of Bell's genius to a series of murders that no-one is interested in solving because the victims are so poor that at first no-one even notices they've been murdered. br / br /Not everything is entirely successful. The framing device, with Holmes visiting his editor at The Strand magazine after he has attempted to send Holmes to his death over the Reichenbach Falls, really has no impact on or even much relevance to the central story and feels a little redundant. But there's so much to enjoy here, from Richardson's superlative performance to Pirie's excellent screenplay, to forgive it its few shortcomings. What is much harder to forgive are the surprisingly heavy cuts on the UK DVD: over 14 minutes has been shorn, removing many of the psychological niceties as well as one suspect's philosophical motivations, which seems inexplicable in a drama that only ran 116 minutes to begin with. Luckily, the US NTSC DVD release is uncut - albeit retitled Dr Bell and Mr Doyle for US audiences - and is well worth getting. Drama this good deserves and amply repays the little extra effort to import it. br / Showing reviews 1-5 of 7 1 2 Next »

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