I reinstalled Elder Scrolls Online, which is a rabbit hole I jump down periodically. I usually do side, and zone, quests. But when I decide to follow some of the main storyline, I am delighted to come across John Cleese’s Sir Cadwell. He is the a rather mad soul shriven who guides the characters in Cleese’s inimitable style. Every scene with Cleese is fun, and he also plays a part in one of the large DLCs.

Here’s a short ‘official’ video on the creation of the character. I think you’ll get the feel of this erratic character. Includes Cleese talking about it.

It’s a blessing he is still with us; active at 86.

Some folks are aware of his The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It (discussed at the end of this post). I set out to write about that awful Sherlock Holmes parody movie. I wrote this essay instead. And ten years later, I still have no interest in re-watching and writing an essay on Strange Case. It is just too dumb.

However, I do think folks who like Cleese, should give a watch to a better Sherlock Holmes project he did four years before Strange Case. It’s out there on YouTube. And while it’s not brilliant, I found it entertaining Cleese. And I will always watch something John Cleese, which makes me smile. He’s genuinely a feel-good kind of guy. So, read on about Elementary: My Dear Watson.

John Cleese is best known, of course, as the sardonic Q opposite Daniel Craig’s James Bond in Die Another Day. He’s not as well remembered for his role in the British comedy troupe, Monty Python. I’m kidding!

On January 18, 1973, the final episode of Python’s third season aired. It was Cleese’s last episode with the group, which would continue on for one more season. That very same day, Cleese’s next project aired – Comedy Playhouse Presents: Elementary, My Dear Watson. It was produced by Barry Took, who had brought the Python members together.

I’m going to tackle the Achilles heel (really, it’s more like the entire torso) of this show, the plot: or rather, the lack of one. It’s barely a story. Try to stick with me, and no, I’m not leaving things out: it really goes like this…

SPOILER – THIS IS THE STORY. YOU CAN GO WATCH FIRST, OR KEEP READING.

The show opens in a room full of dead lawyers, slumped over their desks, each with a knife in the back. Thus the show’s subtitle, The Strange Case of the Dead Solicitors. A policeman and a secretary exchange what are intended to be witty comments, which immediately brings the lame laugh track to the viewer’s attention.

The scene switches to Baker Street where Cleese (an acceptable looking Holmes) is dining with his Watson, well played by William Rushton. Though there is no audience laughter, I enjoyed Watson’s comment about frequently neglecting his practice to dash off on one of Holmes’ hair-brained schemes, while still living comfortably.

After asking Watson what year it is (he looks at his watch and replies, “1973”), Holmes summons a cab, which pulls up to the curb: it’s a horse-drawn hansom and Holmes makes a reference to Doyle, letting us know that they know they’re in a television show. There’s more of that.

Holmes has been summoned by a Lady Cynthia to a country estate where the old family curse of a deadly rattlesnake has started up again. The snake is killing various animals. What?

But en route, Holmes and Watson are pulled into the case of the dead solicitors. While they are pushing a desk with a dead solicitor from London to Manchester to the studios of the tv game show, Call My Bluff, (the actual cast appears and lampoons their own show) Fu Manchu gets into the act.

I’m not making this up!

Fu Manchu ends up with the desk and body, while Holmes gets confused over the Euston and Paddington train stations and he and Watson end up riding back and forth all over England.

Holmes, annoyed with his deerstalker, throws it out of the train window and it lands on the dead solicitor being pushed along by Fu Manchu and his henchman. They fear Holmes is on to them! Inexplicably, Holmes had sewed the letter with Lady Cynthia’s address into the hat, and now they won’t be able to find her house. So, they go back and look for it. Um…

Animals keep dying at Lady Cynthia’s estate (all in the same room…) and she fears her son will be the next victim. Her frantic calls to the police provide no help. The train mishaps have resulted in Holmes and Watson spending three days en route and finally her son is bitten and dies. Soon, all her animals and son dead, we see her menaced by a rattlesnake as she tells it a story to try and distract it.

Holmes makes a wild series of deductions with no logic whatsoever, yells “There’s not a moment to lose” and rushes out the door: falling right off the train.

In a full-leg cast, arm in a cast, and head wrapped from the fall, Holmes and Watson confront Frank Potter, a reformed piano tuner who is actually Moriarty in Elizabethan drag. There’s something about piano tuning, which is the offense that put Potter in jail. Piano tuning is a crime? They convince Potter/Moriarty to come with them to help tune a piano. I don’t get it.Of course, you can tuna piano, but you can’t tuna fish (little classic rock joke for you).

We shift to Fu Manchu, loading five crates, labeled as dead solicitors with knives in backs, onto an airplane. Lady Cynthia, on the phone with the police screams. The snake had killed her as well. Everyone there is dead.

Watson is now dressed as Cyrano De Bergerac (I think) so that all three men look ridiculous and if confronted, can pretend they’re escapees from the nearby asylum.

Moriarty gets a phone call on the way and stays behind. He’s being booked for a show at the London Palladium. The less-than-dynamic duo arrives at the airport as Manchu’s plane takes off and Watson observes that they are too late. “I think not, Watson. Reverse the film!”

And yes, the film runs backwards, the evil doctor backs right into a police van, which takes him away, and the case is solved. Uh huh. The Prime Minister goes on television, congratulating the film editors for saving the day, under instructions from Holmes.

At Baker Street, Holmes tells Watson that Frank Potter/Moriarty had nothing to do with the case. He was a red herring to fill in time so that the script wouldn’t be five minutes short. Watson drinks from a glass in each hand, tells Holmes that he never ceases to amaze him and Holmes says, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” And the show ends.

END SPOILER

John Cleese clearly knows sketch comedy. And he was just wrapping up his brilliant run in Monty Python. But a thirty-minute collection of “bits” with a practically non-existent plot doesn’t really make a television show. I’ll let you watch it to find out why Fu Manchu was trying to get five dead solicitors, slumped over their desks with knives in their backs, to China. Hint – they are presents.

Some things aren’t funny, or just don’t make sense, or both. Why is Jack the Ripper constantly calling Scotland Yard to make a statement? At his house, Moriarty makes a lewd comment and shoos out a blonde wearing only a towel. Watson leers at her as she goes up the stairs and he has to be called in to the other room by Holmes.

However, there is some humor in this show and it’s worth watching. Holmes’ observation of a particular type of mud found on Manchu’s elbow is an amusing dig at Doyle’s penchant for that type of thing. I think that Watson’s comments are among the best lines throughout the show and Rushton is a pretty good parody Watson without being a bumbling fool.

Josephine Tewson, playing Lady Cynthia, appeared in another Holmes parody. She played the nun in the miserable Peter Cook/Dudley Moore Hound of the Baskervilles. THAT was a dog.

It isn’t much of a surprise that the show did not get picked up. I can’t imagine what they would do on a weekly basis when they couldn’t even come up with a plot for a thirty-minute pilot. Two years later, Cleese would star in the short-lived but much funnier Fawlty Towers. Which he is working on a new play about, with his daughter.

Elementary, My Dear Watson, was not Cleese’s only attempt at spoofing Holmes, though it was his best. In 1975, he played Arthur Sherlock Holmes (the detective’s grandson) in The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It. The only reason I don’t call it the worst Holmes-related film ever, is because I’m not sure whether the aforementioned Cook/Moore Hound deserves the title, or if Strange Case (next week’s topic) does. Or if that should be given to Will Ferrell’s Holmes and Watson (ugh). Maybe Strange Case was funny for its time (Henry Kissinger is gunned down by Arabs at the beginning), but I don’t think I laughed once, the entire movie.

Elementary, My Dear Watson does have enough funny bits to make it worthwhile. And as I said, John Cleese has a way of making you smile, even if if later you think ‘That was odd.” But as a thirty-minute comedy show, it came up short of making me want to see more. But I’ll watch this over Strange Case, any day. And I did smile as I re-watched it for this post. It is fun.

---

Bob Byrne’s ‘A (Black) Gat in the Hand’ made its Black Gate debut in 2018 and has returned every summer since.

His ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ column ran every Monday morning at Black Gate from March, 2014 through March, 2017. And he irregularly posts on Rex Stout’s gargantuan detective in ‘Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone.’ He is a member of the Praed Street Irregulars, and founded www.SolarPons.com (the only website dedicated to the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street’).

He organized Black Gate’s award-nominated ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series, as well as the award-winning ‘Hither Came Conan’ series. Which is now part of THE Definitive guide to Conan. He also organized 2023’s ‘Talking Tolkien.’

He has contributed stories to The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories — Parts III, IV, V, VI, XXI, and XXXIII.

He has written introductions for Steeger Books, and appeared in several magazines, including Black Mask, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, The Strand Magazine, and Sherlock Magazine.

You can definitely ‘experience the Bobness’ at Jason Waltz’s ’24? in 42′ podcast.