A few years ago, Nicko Vaughan made it her goal to watch every single on-screen adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s great detective. At well over 350 titles, this was no small task.
This book gathers together an appreciation of just a few of the films and television shows which caught her attention. It’s a walk through of some of the strangest stories, most stupefying performances, and quirkiest manifestations of the detective. From animations to foreign language, from farce to po-faced, from John Cleese to Huey the Dog via Will Ferrell!
From kick-ass ghostbusting to educating us on the versatility of sheathed metal elements, Nicko guides you through the worst, taking the hit, so you don’t have to watch them.
You are welcome.
‘Far From Holmes: An Irreverent Guide to All the Sherlock Holmes You Really Don’t Want to Watch Yourself by Nicko Vaughan (Telos Publishing, 2021; £12.99, pbk) is great fun, though perhaps the subtitle is rather misleading. It implies that all the fifteen films and TV programmes covered are pretty poor — which some certainly are (and the Cook-Moore Hound is dreadful). Dr Vaughan’s criticisms are forthright and entertaining, but so are her favourable comments on the John Cleese Elementary, My Dear Watson and the Anthony Higgins Sherlock Holmes Returns (I prefer the Michael Pennington Return of Sherlock Holmes, but it’s a matter of taste, after all).’ Winter 2021 issue of The Sherlock Holmes Journal
264pp. B-format paperback book.
ISBN: 978-1-84583-181-3
Published March 2021
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nicko Vaughan has been a comedy writer and performer since the age of 21 when she became a finalist in BBC1’s The Stand-up Show, after only her 2nd ever comedy gig. Starting out as a contributing writer for a variety of radio sketch shows, she moved to reviewing DVDs on The Comedy Zone at BBC Radio 7, which she also briefly presented before going on to write the internationally touring show The Bad Film Club. Her roots have always been grounded in comedy. Nicko’s radio play ‘Death Plays Black’ was short-listed as part of the BBC Witty and Twisted series, and she was commissioned to write and perform a short promotional film for the BBC’s Summer of British Film. She has performed at comedy festivals around the world and continues to write about her two favourite subjects, shocking movies, and Sherlock Holmes.
Nicko is also an award-winning scriptwriter and filmmaker, with her 2018 surrealist comedy movie Alan making it to the finals of the Golden Script Competition and winning Best Short Experimental Film at the Feel the Reel International Film Festival. But her love of bad movies continues to be her passion, and she now uses them as a cautionary example in her lectures on screenwriting at the University of Swansea, where she is part of the Creative Writing Department.
Peter E. Blau –
‘Nicko Vaughan’s Far from Holmes (Canterbury: Telos, 2021; 262 pp., $17.84) promises that it’s “an irreverent guide to all the Sherlock Holmes films you really don’t want to watch yourself,” and it certainly lives up to her promise; she explains that she made it her goal to watch every on-screen adaptation of Sherlock Holmes that she could get her hands on, films and television, and wound up dealing with more than 350 titles, from which she selected 15 to discuss in detail. One of the best things about her book is that she actually likes bad films, and she writes about them with verve and humor. Recommended.’
Peter E Blau, Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press. Current and past issue are available at http://www.redcircledc.org/index.php?id=39