One of those drizzly, grey days where one mumbles phrases from Conan Doyle’s The Musgrave Ritual:
‘Where was the sun?’
‘Over the oak.’
‘Where was the shadow?’
‘Under the elm.’
Not a bad day to keep to the couch and stream the Granada production with Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes. And if by some unfortunate confluence of events you’ve managed to miss these adventures, you have the whole winter ahead of you to catch up. For the holiday season, you could do no better than starting with The Blue Carbuncle. Fairly soon, you will be thoroughly familiar with every painting, Persian slipper, bookcase, and settee in Holmes and Watson’s sitting room as they are waited on hand-and-foot by Mrs. Hudson, smoke pipes, play violins, administer the occasional 7 percent solution of cocaine, and stare at the fireplace while deciding their course of action before bursting out the doors of 221B Baker Street into the teeming, muddy streets of Victorian England. I can never decide what I envy more, their adventures or a housekeeper like Mrs. Hudson.