Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking

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Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking is a British television movie originally broadcast on BBC One in the UK on December 26, 2004. Produced by Tiger Aspect Productions, it was written by Alan Cubitt and was a sequel to the same company's adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles, made for the BBC two years previously. Although Silk Stocking retained the same Dr. Watson, Ian Hart, this time the character of Sherlock Holmes was played by Rupert Everett.

Unlike Baskervilles, this production was an original story written by Cubitt, although the script used some lines of dialogue for Holmes taken from Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories. Set in the early 1900s, Cubitt provided Watson with a new wife and indicates that it had been some time since he and Holmes last worked together. The character of Holmes is also somewhat different to previous interpretations, with a ruthless edge that leads him to shoot the main villain at the story's conclusion.

Reviews of the drama were generally mixed. "I did feel that this peculiar tale was intended to tickle American tootsies," Nancy Banks-Smith wrote in The Guardian. "The king was announced as "King Edward the Seventh", Dr Watson married a Yankee psychiatrist, the duchess was having an affair with the footman, well, two as it turned out, and the London fog never lifted."^[1]

Some co-production funding for the drama was provided by United States PBS broadcaster WGBH, and it was later shown on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre in 2005. The original title for the production was Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Season, the name being changed only a few weeks before transmission.^[2]

Directed by Simon Cellan-Jones, the production was released on DVD in 2005, with an audio commentary by Cellan-Jones and producer Elinor Day.

The book given to Holmes by Mrs Vandeleur is Psychopathia Sexualis.