Sherlock Holmes starring Peter Cushing

I've nearly finished watching A&E's recent release of Peter Cushing's Sherlock Holmes episodes for BBC Television on DVD and found myself feeling rather disappointed.

Not because of the episodes I've seen. They're great fun to watch. Peter Cushing and Nigel Stock are very enjoyable to watch as Holmes and Watson and the episodes are very faithful to the original tales written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Why am I disappointed then? Because out of the 15 episodes produced for BBC Television, only five of those episodes survived.

This was due to something the BBC did back then called wiping. To save money on videotape, the BBC would wipe tapes of television shows and then reuse them for other broadcasts.

There are countless episodes from classic BBC television shows that DO NOT exist anymore because of this. The most famous of this is Doctor Who where many episodes from William Hartnell right up to Jon Pertwee's tenure are either lost forever or do not exist in their entirety.

I'm sure if any of those people could have looked into the future, they would probably be kicking themselves now seeing the sales for classic television series's on home video.

Back to Sherlock Holmes, one of the episodes I was greatly disappointed in seeing no longer existed was Black Peter. I'm not sure if there's ever been an adaptation of that Sherlock Holmes story apart from Eille Norwood in the early part of the 20th Century.

But all that aside, I highly recommend picking up The Sherlock Holmes Collection on DVD. The episodes that did survive being wiped are excellent. Some viewers who are not familiar with the way the BBC used to film their shows in video for the studio shots and on film on location might find it hard to get used to.

Especially with the way most films and television shows tend to be a bit more real looking nowadays.

I basically grew up on watching PBS, so there's this part of me that has a real warm spot for watching shows like that.

But I've been waiting a decade for this to be released on DVD and it was definitely worth the wait!!