News from the Holmes website: The Hound will be shown in the US on Masterpiece Theatre on January 19th. The DVD will be released (US coding) on January 21st. You can pre-order it at this weblink. You can also pre-order the video from a few other established US video stores but the “release dates” may vary.

Barbara B. alerted me to a couple of short reviews of the movie in the Toronto Globe and Mail as the film was telecast on Canadian TV last night. The first review states:

The Hound of the Baskervilles (CBC, 8 p.m.) is a new, slick adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes mystery. It will be the BBC’s big Christmas Day show. It’s good and gory, but odd. For a start, Watson (Ian Hart) is far more compelling than Holmes (Richard Roxborough). The monster hound is sometimes convincing and sometimes not. Richard E. Grant has a whale of a time stealing the thing as the archeologist Stapleton. If you’ve never read the story or seen a movie version, keep an eye on the shifty butler. It’s a British thing.

Another review from the website states:

“This remake of the classic Sherlock Holmes tale grabs you by the throat in the opening scene and never lets go. The first thing we see is the body of Charles Baskerville, frozen in a death mask of fear (and doesn’t he look suspiciously like John Cleese in a corpse cameo?) and the 100-year-old mystery begins to unfold one more time. One small trifle: Henry Baskerville, who’s been abroad farming in Canada, is played by Matt Day, who flattens his accent into an American drawl rather than a Canadian twang. Also starring are Richard Roxburgh (Moulin Rouge) as Sherlock Holmes, Ian Hart (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) as Dr. Watson, Richard E. Grant, John Nettles, Geraldine James and Neve McIntosh.”

Also on the subject of Sherlock Holmes, I was contacted recently by Gavin Collinson who writes for “Sherlock – The Crime Magazine”. Gavin kindly sent me two reviews that he’d written to put up on the Temple. The first is one for the aformentioned Hound Of The Baskerviles which you can read here and the second is a review of Sherlock (A Case Of Evil) whick you can read here. Gavin also informed me that The Hound Of The Baskervilles is, in fact, Richard’s THIRD foray into the world of Sherlock Holmes – Having filmed “Encounters: The Other Side (tx 29.8.92)” way back in 1992! Apparently in this film REG plays a man believing himself to be Sherlock Holmes. I’ve asked Gavin for more information on this film so stay tuned.