Russian Holmes

In our last episode of the year, we look at our first major non-English-language Holmes adaptation - the Soviet series of films that ran from 1979-1986. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson is sometimes known as Soviet Holmes, Russian Holmes, Lenfilm Holmes, or Old Russian Holmes. It starred Vasily Livanov as Sherlock Holmes and Vitaly Solomin as Dr. Watson

Lenfilm’s series of films have often been described as one of the best Holmes adaptations out there, with particular praise directed towards Livanov’s Holmes. Murderer’s eyeballs, serial killers, tandem bicycles and men crying - join us for our take on these characters and an evaluation of how handsome Vitaly Solomin is actually (so, so handsome).

This discussion contains major plot spoilers for the canon stories “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton,” as well as “The Final Problem” and “The Empty House.” We haven’t covered them on the podcast yet, so if you’ve managed to avoid Doyle’s major plot twist and would like to avoid spoilers - save this episode for later!

Music credit: The songs “Denmark (Live)” by the Portland Cello Project is featured with an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

This episode features audio from the Russian Holmes films “Acquaintance” and “The Twentieth Century Approaches.”