The Best Sherlock Holmes ?

Between 1979 and 1986, Russia’s Lenfilm Studios produced a series of television films based on the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Directed by Igor Maslennikov, it was the most popular series in the history of Soviet television, and starred Vasily Livanov as the legendary London consulting detective and Vitaly Solomin as his redoubtable associate, Dr. John H. Watson, M.D., late of Her Majesty’s Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers--a role for which Solomin has been universally praised as one of the most authentic and amusing of all Dr. Watsons. The films have since become cult favorites. Many consider Livanov’s Holmes to be one of the finest interpretations of Conan Doyle’s eccentric hero. Aficionados have noted that of all the actors to have played the part, it is Livanov who most closely resembles the famous Sydney Paget drawings that accompanied Conan Doyle’s original stories in Strand magazine between 1891-1892. Livanov’s performance as Holmes was so highly regarded in England tha