Nuance! Yes, nuance is what Granada wins at! I mean one of the things.
So, I’m going to divide this up into categories:
#1: Holmes’s face journey during Lestrade’s speech at the end of “The Six Napoleons.”
I know all the stories about Brett’s performance are about his being a “becomer” and living the part to the point where it started to bother him. But he also, clearly, just has a LOT of technique, and you can see it all in his reaction to Lestrade telling him they’re proud of him down at Scotland Yard. I mean there are other episodes I like better, but this particular moment…I mean look at all the tiny, tiny little movements that go into creating this very complicated and very emotional moment which, I’m just going to point out, actually manages to convey what Watson says he’s describing at this moment in the story. Like, how did he learn how to make his face do this? Why didn’t he found his own acting school?
#2: David Burke, bless his heart, did not have this level of technique. But what he was great at was joining. My impression is that whereas Hardwicke always saw himself as a supporting player–partly because he was actually emotionally supporting Brett during a lot of this time–Burke wanted a more peer-to-peer acting relationship, and I think that was important. So many of my favorite nuance moments for him involve Watson joining in with something Holmes is doing, such as the way they sit down to stare at Henry Baker once he answers the goose ad in “Blue Carbuncle”:
#3: Hardwicke was, I think, better at nuance, and for him the moment I remember for that is the final conversation at the end of “The Abbey Grange” when he’s talking to Holmes about his tendency to be judge, jury, and executioner. Burke’s Watson has some arguments with him about that, but Burke always lets the anger come through. Hardwicke doesn’t get mad; he’s just disappointed, and looking at Holmes in a kind of judging way that Holmes finds very uncomfortable. That was the moment where I was like, OK, new guy, you can stay, I like you.
Oh my God, Watson’s dressing-gowns.
I love the 221b set, just in general. More specifically:
* The food and the china services. All I want is to go live in 221b and have that breakfast brought up to me every day. SO AWESOME and yet Holmes never touches it. I’m with Watson. Eat those eggs! Drink that tea!
* The little model boat that Watson makes in Resident Patient, which then shows up in Holmes’s bedroom.
And, as a stellar example of the production team doing storytelling with nuance, there’s the photo on the Countess of Morcar’s desk in “The Blue Carbuncle.”
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