My friend gave me the DVD set as a birthday gift. I never heard of Ronald Howard before this. I was always a Basil Rathbone fan.I'm really enjoying Ronald Howard as Holmes. Holmes is the one that goes off the path and Dr. Watson has to bring him back.While the Basile Rathbone are more modern. The Ronald Howard takes you back to the horse and buggy times.This is more in line with the original books.These episodes are like potato chips, I can watch five in a row with no problem.This is one of the best gifts I ever got. Thanks Robin.

While the much more innocent children of 1954-55 (when I was 9 and 10) might have needed a warning that there were conversations about death, and occasional scenes with actors playing their roles (freshly) dead, there are no scenes that would upset a modern child of 9 or 10. Indeed some modern kids might think the whole thing a bit boring, especially as it's in black-and-white, with no computer-generated graphics or bells and whistles, which either didn't exist back then or were just in the thinking-up stage, kids who like old films (there must be some SOME out there!) might enjoy it, as there's some understated wit and humour, not something all Sherlock Holmes films go in for. My pleasure in this series is of course mainly nostalgia, for a time when I was an innocent child living happily with my mum and dad, with living aunts (5) and uncles (4) and innumerable cousins, all living close-by and very loving to me as I was the youngest of my own generation, and was bright and lively, with a strong imagination. Of course I enjoy it all over again, and probably always will.

I found a boxed set of 25 of these films on 5 discs in The Works, the British remaindered books outlet, a year ago. (I don't think you have remaindered books in the USA - they're pulped, due to different laws.) The DVD set was produced by a Dutch firm, and not re-mastered - but the films are in quite good condition. They were made first in the year of my birth, 1954, so I did some research to find out why I had never seen them. I had seen episodes from every other British TV Holmes series, and heard, through archive material, episodes from every British and American radio series.All became clear: they were never shown in Britain! Even though most of the actors were British, with a handful of Americans and French - the series was shot in France - the series was made by an American producer for US TV.Most stories are good, some are excellent, some are terrible, and some are from the canon, with altered titles for some unfathomable reason (The Engineer's Thumb becomes The Shoeless Engineer, The Greek Interpreter becomes The French Interpreter).Nine marks instead of ten because of the three or four awful ones - a Red Indian sets up his wigwam inside 221B Baker Street in one of them! I'm glad I walked into that shop. I might never have known about this series otherwise! Enjoy.

Until I saw this I always thought Basil Rathbone was the only actor that brought the correct intensity to this role (Jeremy Brett's pompous interpretation was putrid in its faithlessness to the original), but Ronald Howard's Sherlock Holmes is superb, even if the writers tampered with the character's quirks a bit (the original Homes was never absent-minded, and Watson, for that matter, was never as observant as this series would seem to indicate). I have to agree with another reviewer that I now want a copy of every episode, so enjoyable it was to see the two I have been lucky enough to view. I say this not only as a Rathbone fan but as a devotee who has read Conan Doyle's COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES, all 56 short stories and four novels, at least a dozen times (and some stories at least twice that). Highly recommended for true fans of this dynamic duo.