I reposted a post yesterday that reminded me of my favorite actor, and I thought I’d talk about him a bit. Colin Jeavons is not a particularly well-known actor at this point, and even his best-known role (Inspector Lestrade in the Granada ‘Sherlock Holmes’ series from the 1980s) tends to be overshadowed by the absolutely riveting portrayal of Sherlock Holmes himself by Jeremy Brett. Likewise, he was in the original ‘House of Cards’ miniseries, but was paired against Ian Richardson at his most mesmerizing.
But the thing about Colin Jeavons is, whenever he was on screen, even with such amazing actors, he held his own, and heightened any scene he was in. And he did something even more than that. He took characters who tended to be disregarded and he changed the perception of them. His character in ‘House of Cards,’ Tim Stamper, didn’t even exist in the book the series was based on. He was created as a vehicle for exposition and to have someone for the main character, Francis Urquhart, to bounce off of for the television series. But his performance was so good and his character so gloriously awful that his character was written into the subsequent book. He turned a character created for convenience into one that was compelling enough for the author to change the next book to include him.
But perhaps the greatest example of this is ‘Sherlock Holmes.’ I am a massive Holmes nerd and have been for decades. I inhaled the short stories and novellas in High School, and then branched out to every pastiche I could find. And of course, I found the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ series from the ‘80s, and loved it as the most faithful adaptation of the short stories possible. The acting was excellent, and every character looked like they’d stepped out of the illustrations from the stories. It was incredible.
The first time I watched the series, I was transfixed by Jeremy Brett’s performance, as I’m sure most people were. But as I went back, watching again, I found myself more and more drawn to Colin Jeavons’ portrayal of Inspector Lestrade. In the stories, the character is essentially a plot point. He’s described as diligent, neat, and a little vain. He has a bit of a competition with Holmes, but also respects him a great deal, and Holmes respects Lestrade more than any of the other inspectors at Scotland Yard. Theirs is a relationship played, for the most part, in implications.
In High School, I missed those implications until I watched the series and saw Brett and Jeavons play opposite one another. Suddenly, Inspector Lestrade was infinitely interesting to me. He was proud, smart but not brilliant, stubborn, but also had great reticence taking credit for Holmes’ accomplishments. His respect for Holmes came out in ‘The Six Napoleons’, in a scene in which Holmes (for the only time in the books and one of the very few in the series) is nearly brought to tears by Lestrade admitting that he was proud of Holmes. It’s a tense, lovely scene played carefully, with huge restraint by both actors, and it’s my favorite scene in the entire series.
As I plowed through pastiches, I noticed something else. Those published before the Granada series tended to portray Lestrade as an idiot, a buffoon, or even actively malicious. He was an antagonist with relative frequency. But after 1985, this changed. Lestrade becomes more complex, more competent, a character in his own right rather than a roadblock or a bit of stupid comic relief.
I can’t credit the writing of the Granada series with this. The series is essentially the short stories ripped to the screen. The pastiche writers had all these scenes before the Granada series in the original short stories, almost word for word. They were likely influenced by the Basil Rathbone movies, which also portrayed Lestrade as an idiot, so they, too, missed the more interesting implications in the writing.
So the only conclusion I can draw is that Colin Jeavons, by taking the lines from the original stories and infusing them with his own ability to make a character compelling, changed the perception of Inspector Lestrade forever. In every subsequent adaptation, and in the majority of subsequent pastiches, the characterization is in part or in whole based on his portrayal. That portrayal has, in fact, been more or less accepted by the fandom as the canon interpretation.
He made Lestrade my favorite character in Holmes canon. He took relatively small, disregarded roles and turned them into something so compelling he could elevate scenes even with acting greats like Brett and Richardson. He is forever overlooked as an actor, but he will forever be my favorite actor.
Addendum: He also played a role in easily the most controversial episode of ‘The Avengers’ (The Hellfire Club episode), which makes me happy, and he was hysterical in ‘Adam Adamant Lives!’, the single most camp series ever created (ripped off wholesale by the creators of Austin Powers). He was one of the few villains who didn’t die at the end of the episode, because they didn’t have time to choreograph the fight scene, so it consisted of Adam chasing him around a room as he chucked potted plants at Adam. The actor playing Adam argued to the director that killing a character after he threw potted plants at him was just way too much overkill.
In summary: Colin Jeavons is one of the most influential actors you’ve never heard of, and he also just had a WILD acting career, and I love him for that.
