Okay, so a stated previously, I LOVE Sherlock Holmes. My dad even got an autographed copy of the complete works... which I thought was totally cool until I realized two things -
A. #1. It was signed, "To Talia.... Sincerely, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" and he has been dead for oh, I don't know... 50 years?
B. #2. It was totally my dad's handwriting.
But that did make it kinda more cool, that my dad would do that for me.
Anywho, so I was watching a little late night TV the other night and two things happened (and they say things come in threes...) -
A. #1. I saw a listing for the old (1980's) Jeremy Brett version of the Sherlock Holmes tv series AND
B. #2. My curiosity peaked, I went searching on Comcast for more and found that Encore was showing the old, OLD (1940's) Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce version of the Sherlock Holmes tv/movie series that they were making while doing the radio show during WWII!!!!
I have never seen #2 and got super excited... until I realized I don't get Encore. So I went searching... I found the entire set on Amazon.com! Both of them! The 1980's and 1940's versions! All episodes! ON DVD!!!!
Of course I bought them immediately (early birthday present to me)!
So here's the deal. Brett was brilliant as Holmes but Rathbone created the role... and yet, I have never seen his face! (okay, except on wikipedia) The earlier episodes that Rathbone did were taken out of Doyle's context and put during WWII so Holmes and Watson were fighting the Nazis. When the war was over, they went back to dramatizations of stories like Doyle's (they did that a lot, write new 
episodes based on Doyle's characters and style).
episodes based on Doyle's characters and style).
So, needless to say, I am anxious to get my DVDs and have a Sherlock Holmes marathon! :-)
P.S. The top is Jeremy Brett and the bottom is (obviously) Basil Rathbone.
--Talia