John Neville was offered the part of Holmes in the late 60s BBC series (replacing Douglas Wilmer), but he passed and it went to Peter Cushing instead. Although I would have liked to see Neville take another shot at it, I have no complaints with the final choice. Neville did go on to play the Holmesian Dr. Thorndyke in the first episode of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. If you liked his performance in A Study in Terror, it’s worth checking out. If anything, Thorndyke is even more robotic, conceited, and condescending than Holmes, but Neville still gives him a slightly mischievous quality and sly sense of humor.

Neville had a successful theatre career before resurfacing in Baron Munchausen, but it’s a shame he didn’t get more film work, he’s a dynamic and engaging presence (wonderful on the stage as well).

Nicholas Meyer, who wrote the Holmes pastiche The Seven Per Cent Solution also wrote The West-End Horror, which combines Holmes and a Ripper-like killer, and there’s another Sherlock Holmes vs. the Ripper novel called The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibden. And of course there are also novels that pit Holmes against Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and, if you can believe it, War of the Worlds.

I’ve enjoyed Murder By Decree, but every broadcast of it I’ve seen has been in flat looking, washed out TV prints. There’s a new-ish DVD of it from Sony, hopefully it’s an improvement.