The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1939 detective radio show

The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1939 detective story

The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939, United States)

The humble building on Baker Street 221B looks the same as the other houses on the street. At first glance, no one would guess that this is the address of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes and his faithful companion, Doctor John Watson. But Holmes’ unique gift of observation and analytic mind made him one of the most famous detectives, he helped the Scotland Yard solve the most complicated cases they have faced.

The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was, of course, not the first radio adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle iconic stories (hence the New bit in the title), but in this case, the word new also had a different meaning. In 1930, scriptwriter Edith Meiser created The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes for NBC radio, the show ran for 6 years. When in 1939 she was asked to prepare more adaptations, the program was renamed to The New Adventures, not only to signal that it is a new show and not re-runs of the old episodes, but also because some of the episodes were only inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle stories and were using the characters created by him, but the plots were written by Meiser and other authors. Some of those stories were also adapted to reflect the current state of the world, so instead of solving 19th century problems, Sherlock Holmes was facing the 1930s problems in his cases.

The short, 30-minutes long, format did not leave a lot of space to delve into the depths of the stories, but with surprising twists and kept in original style, they were entertaining audiences for 11 years with over 200 episodes produced. Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, who played Holmes and Watson between 1939 and 1946 in The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, at the same time also played those same roles in the series of movies. After they left the show in 1946, other actors played their parts, the show was finally cancelled in 1950.

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