40 episodes listed below
Dr. Watson, a fireside chair, and a case to tell.
John Stanley plays Holmes and Alfred Shirley plays Watson in these radio dramatizations by Edith Meiser, built on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective. Each case starts in Watson's firelit study, where a visiting Mr. Harris coaxes out the tale, anything from a Sussex vampire to a crate of cabbages.
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Every case here starts in Dr. Watson's study. A fire burns, Mr. Harris comes in from whatever the month has brought, and the two make small talk about May blossoms, snowdrifts, a cold November rain or the Christmas festivities. Then something sets Watson remembering. It might be a wedding announcement naming Juan Fernando Ferguson, who, Watson explains, was the victim in the case of the Sussex Vampire when he was hardly a year old. It might be a telegram from Holmes urging him to tell the radio public about his aversion to Oleracea Capitata, which turns out to mean cabbage. The aversion has nothing to do with digestion. It comes from a crate of produce and a personal tussle with Professor Moriarty, a case in which Watson says he acquitted himself with some distinction. Then the storytelling frame gives way to full drama. John Stanley plays Holmes and Alfred Shirley plays Watson, in scripts credited as dramatizations by Edith Meiser and based on the character Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created. The scenes travel far from the fireside. Holmes and Watson climb a ladder onto a great liner looming out of the fog, and Captain Brooks explains why he fears a fire on board more than a typhoon or a mutiny. Watson, desperate to get off the pitching boat below, says he would climb the Eiffel Tower on a clothesline to do it. In The Case Of The Well Staged Murder, a patient called George, touchy about his McGowan tartan bonnet, vows to get even with the superintendent, Dr. Jeffers. The Case Of The Sanguinary Spectre turns gothic, with a house that has a gory history, a Stuart room where King Charles once hid, the ghost of Lady Daphne and a visitor from Pittsburgh who has always wanted to meet a spook. Another adventure, announced as The Case of the Ever-Blooming Roses, is set up with a young woman who narrowly escaped death because a spray of yellow roses would not wither. Watson calls that story more macabre than poetic. The sponsor is never gone for long. Clipper Craft clothes for men presents the broadcasts, and a new spring outfit can become a talk about good tailoring. At one point Watson holds back his story until Mr. Harris has told listeners how to look their best. The closing lines name the next week's case, including The Mazarin Stone and Shoscombe Old Place, and tell listeners that a local Clipper Craft dealer can tell them how to get tickets to the broadcasts in New York. The study scenes are warm and polite, and the drama moves quickly once danger arrives. Each episode keeps the case, the fireside frame around it and the ads that paid for it.
Made for: Suits a listener who enjoys vintage radio drama with the original sponsor chatter left in, and who likes Holmes cases that range from vampire scares and haunted rooms to fog-bound ocean liners.
What sets it apart: What sets it apart is the fireside frame: Watson tells each case to a visiting Mr. Harris, and the sponsor's tailoring pitch is written into their conversation. Watson also gets a turn as the hero, down to a scuffle with Professor Moriarty.
The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes: John Stanley - Dr. Watson: Alfred Shirley
By Watson's fire, even a broken Napoleon bust becomes your business.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A young horse seems to die of old age, and Holmes finds the same impossible affliction spreading to the sheep.
Blazing Starr's death sends Holmes and Watson toward the stables near King's Pylum, where a horse only a little over five years old appears to have died of old age. Colonel Ross brings the case, but the puzzle widens once the same strange wasting begins to overtake the sheep.
Holmes turns a room, a wax figure, and a Count with a revolver into crisp theatrical misdirection.
Sherlock Holmes meets the Count in a room already arranged for deception, where a wax figure, a revolver, and a bedroom within call make the visit feel less like a surprise than a trap being calmly sprung.
A Roman toga and a drowned man in a sealed chamber give Holmes a theatrical case grounded in physical clues.
A drowned man in a Roman toga turns a fireside Holmes tale into a sealed-room puzzle built from costume, cold stone, and blocked access. The body is found in a gloomy Roman bath that feels closer to a tomb than a chamber, soaked through and apparently drowned, with no fresh…
A stolen uniform and tobacco clue give this Albany mystery crisp comic snap.
Sherlock Holmes follows an imitation-pearl case from Watson's rain-dimmed study to the Albany, where a stolen coachman's uniform and a tobacco clue suggest a scheme tucked behind the obvious facts.
A shattered Napoleon bust draws Holmes into a late-night household mystery.
The Adventure of the Six Napoleons turns a late-night disturbance at Horace Harker's home into a compact Holmes mystery built around a shattered Napoleon bust. Holmes arrives with Dr.
Holmes faces Baron Gruner's polished menace while Kitty Winter gives the case its fiercest charge.
Baron Gruner makes a sleek, threatening figure here: polished, dangerous, and fixed on Violet as Holmes moves to break his hold before a marriage can trap her.
Dice, divine mysteries, and the trouble with good intentions.
John Stanley and Alfred Shirley perform a Sherlock Holmes radio drama about Hurlstone Manor, where Alice Adair fears Reginald Musgrave will sell the estate to Hennessy Plunkett, the pickle king.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr.
Sherlock Holmes investigates Baron Gruner, an Austrian murderer who plans to marry Violet de Merville despite her family's objections.
John Stanley voices Sherlock Holmes and Alfred Shirley voices Dr.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr.
["A five-year-old Wessex Cup horse named Blazing Star is reported dead of old age after a black cat scratches him in Colonel Ross's stable.", "Sherlock Holmes, Dr.
Sir George Westbrook brings Holmes a corpse in a Roman senator's toga found under the coal exchange in Lower Thames Street, inside buried Roman baths in Billingsgate.
Sherlock Holmes - Stanley & Shirley's 'Lady Waverly's Imitation Pearls' opens with a stolen carriage, an injured driver named Burbage, and Lady Waverley's jewel box missing from Blevyn and Possiter.
Dr.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr.
["Sherlock Holmes - Stanley & Shirley's \"The Mazarin Stone\" centers on the missing Crown diamond and Count Negretto Silvius.", "John Stanley plays Sherlock Holmes and Alfred Shirley plays Dr.
A radio drama adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story 'The Sussex Vampire'.