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Highway Patrolman Sherman Holmes (Larry Hagman) is pretty much the most
inefficient officer of the whole NYPD - but he dreams to be a great
detective like Sherlock Holmes. And then, while reading a Sherlock Holmes
novel while on the job, his motorbike falls onto him, causing severe
braindamage - and now he's absolutely convinced he actually is
Sherlock Holmes. Weirdly enough, his detuctive abilities have vastly
improved to support his illusions. A certain Doctor Watson (Jenny
O'Hara) is treating him at the mental clinic, but she soon deems him
uncurable (of his belief to be Sherlock Holmes) on one hand, but harmless and self-suistainable on the other -
so he is released a certified Sherlock Holmes (complete with classic
outfit), and Doc Watson soon becomes
his actual Doctor Watson when dropping in on him from time to time as some
sort of after-treatment treatment becomes supporting him solving a murder
case ... Thing is, a man has died in an apparent accident ... but Holmes
has his own ideas about it, and eventually, he and Watson can prove that
it was actually murder, and they get the backup from Lt Tinker (Nicholas
Colesanto) to secretly continue to work on the case. Soon, a second man is
murdered in an equally suspicous "car accident", and Holmes
finds clues leading to a third man, Vince Cooley. What all these men
had in common? They were criminals on parole, except for Cooley, whose
trial is on only today. Holmes and Watson attent the trial, but draw too
much attention on themselves ... and then a smoke bomb goes off, and the
bailiff shoots Cooley, and misses only thanks to Holmes. However, when the
bailiff's weapon is examined, it's found out that it hasn't been fired at
all. On the other hand, the judge (Charles Macauly) inesplicably wears a
bailiff's uniform under his robe, and carries a gun that has just been
fired. After the judge is arrested, Holmes presents everyone (including
the audience) with the solution to the mystery: The judge was actually the
head of a ring behind a string of recent bank robberies, all carried
through using smokebombs, and he used criminals he himself paroled to
carry out his evil deeds - but personally murdered them should they step
out of line. And how did the judge get the smoke bombs into all these
banks? Why, via the watercooler delivery man of course, who is now also
to break him free from arrest - but Holmes finds the smoke bomb just in
time ... A pilot for a never-realized series that's not quite
as dumb as it sounds: Basically, while nobody takes this film's concept
too seriously, it is not sacrificed to moronic comedy, neither. And while
Larry Hagman - between his mega-successes with I Dream of Jeannie
and Dallas - might not be the obvious choice for Sherlock
Holmes, he handles his role with the right amount of irony.
Granted, he probably wouldn't totally convinced as the genuine article,
but his character isn't supposed to be Sherlock Holmes
himself but a parody of him to begin with - and as such, he, a gifted
comedian, carries the film quite beautifully. The plot at hand though is a
rather routine affair, your typical TV murder mystery full of hardly
convincing plottwists and half-assed exaggerations hardly likely to spark
much interest. Yet that's the basis of many a TV murder mystery, so why
wasn't the series picked up? Basically I think its main concept (Sherlock
Holmes reborn in modern times) dries up sufficiently over
the duration of this pilot, and while much of it has been fun in the
beginning of the story, it has already become somewhat tired routine
towards the end, and further episodes would probably have been nothing but
over-repetitive. Still, as a standalone film, this is at least ok
shallow genre entertainment, and it's fun to see Larry Hagman as an
intentionally awkward Holmes.
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