The BBC "Sherlock Holmes" series: 1965/1968.

A series of Sherlock Holmes adaptations, based on the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

After Holmes turns down the imperious Lady Morcar's demand that he help her locate a stolen priceless blue carbuncle, the gem turns up in a Christmas goose.

When a woman receives a series of valuable pearls from an unknown party after the disappearance of her father, Sherlock Holmes is hired to investigate.

Holmes is engaged by John Mason, groom to Sir Robert Norberton, whose horse is to run in the Derby in a few days. Mason has noticed many things wrong at Shoscombe Old Place, such as Norberton's meeting a stranger in the family vault, the discovery of bones in a furnace, and the distant behaviour of Sir Robert's sister, who has refused to acknowledge her favourite horse and given away her dog. Holmes reveals a plot which, rather than criminal,is a desperate bid to buy time.

Mr. John Scott Eccles tells Holmes how he went to stay overnight at Wisteria Lodge as the guest of Spaniard senor Garcia but in the morning everyone had gone. Senor Garcia is dead and Holmes travels to Surrey to assist Inspector Baynes in the murder enquiry. Baynes believes that Garcia's servant is to blame but Holmes is more interested in a neighbour, Henderson, and his English governess, Miss Burnet, who are not what they first appear to be.

Country land-owner Hilton Cubitt is concerned about his American wife Elsie who seems to have been communicating with an unknown party, using a set of hieroglyphics which resemble dancing men.

When a man is found poisoned in an abandoned building with the word "RACHE" written in blood on the wall. LaStrade confidently declares, "Cherchez la femme!"

Holmes asks Watson to protect the new Lord of Baskerville Manor whose life seems to be threatened by a legendary, almost supernatural, hound.

Sir Henry is apparently attacked and killed by the hound but the victim is actually an escaped convict, Seldon, Mrs. Barrymore's brother, to whom she had given old clothes of Henry's and the dog, recognizing the scent from the boot stolen in London, had gone for him. Watson meets a disguised Holmes, living rough on the moors in order to survey the likely suspects. He believes he has seen the man who controls the hound and sets a trap for him with Sir Henry as its bait.

The much cantankerous and widely despised Bill McCarthy is found bludgeoned to death and his son, with whom he often quarreled, is the prime suspect.

A Foreign Office employee who had an important Naval treaty stolen whilst he was on duty has become sick with worry and retired from his job, staying with his fiancee and her brother. Watson is concerned for him and brings in Holmes, who is in time to thwart an attempted burglary from the man's sick room.

Reginald Musgrave, who comes from a family with a long and noble history, asks for Holmes' assistance when his womanizing butler mysteriously disappears after Musgrave has caught him trying to locate a map of instructions, known as the Musgrave Ritual, which will allegedly unearth royal treasure, hidden in the Civil War.

Holmes helps Inspector Hopkins investigate the murder of 'Black' Peter Carey, a drunken, aggressive ex-sailor, harpooned to death in his log cabin in the woods. Peter seems to have known his killer as he had been drinking with them. A tobacco pouch with the initials P.C. is found but Carey did not smoke. A book with the initials J.H.N. leads Hopkins to arrest John Neligan, who was certainly in the cabin at some time but Holmes reckons he was too feeble a man to wield a harpoon. So who is P.C?

Whilst in Cornwall Holmes is approached by the local vicar to determine how Brenda Tregennis died whilst sitting in a room, playing cards with her two brothers, who were struck down with dementia as a result. The trail leads to an African adventurer and a deadly root known as the Devil's Foot.

Helen Stoner needs the great man's help. She lives in a country mansion with her flamboyant and sinister guardian Grimesby Raylott, who has travelled abroad and brought home some souvenir livestock. Recently her sister Julia, about to be married and made by Raylott to sleep in a bed that was screwed to the floor, died in mysterious circumstances. Her final words referred to a "speckled band." Helen is fearful for her own safety and Holmes and Watson investigate.

Sir James Damery, acting for a very illustrious client, consults Holmes. Violet Merville is engaged to marry the Austrian Baron Gruner, who has murdered at least one wife and yet the foolish, headstrong Violet will not hear a word against him. The client is fearful for Violet's safety should the marriage go ahead. Holmes enlists the assistance of Kitty Winter, a woman whom the Baron used and threw aside, to get access to Gruner's album in which he has catalogued his conquests, to make Violet see him in his true light.

Miss Violet Hunter has been engaged by the jovial if odd Mr. Rucastle at his country house in Hampshire as a governess to his little boy. The pay is excellent but the terms are bizarre - Miss Hunter has to cut her hair short and stand in the window wearing a blue dress. She realizes that this is for the benefit of a person watching the house continually but needs Holmes' help in working out why.

Red-headed shop-keeper Jabez Wilson comes to Holmes with a puzzle. Goaded on by his young assistant Spaulding, he answered an advert for men with his hair colouring to join the Red-Headed League. It merely consisted of his sitting alone in a room, copying out words for several weeks. One day he found a notice on the door to state that the league had disbanded. What could it mean? Realizing that Wilson's premises are next to a bank and young Spaulding has been digging Holmes is in a position to set a trap to find out.

Holmes is called in by Inspector Hopkins to assist in solving the murder of Sir Eustace Brackenstall, whose house, the Abbey Grange, was also robbed, his young Australian wife Mary, being tied up by the thieves. Evidence points to it being the work of the Randall family, notorious local thieves, but certain discrepancies lead Holmes to rightly suspect a justified crime of passion, made to look like a break-in and a crime whose participants may be allowed to go free.

Why should a wild-eyed Latin go around London, entering shops and burgling houses purely to smash miniature busts of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte? Holmes knows. The man is not a lunatic, as the police suspect,but is looking for something concealed in one of the Napoleons.

Mrs. St. Clair is convinced that she momentarily saw her husband, a respectable journalist who commutes to London from their country home, looking out of the window of an opium den in a rough part of the city. The police investigate but find a bundle of clothes and no body. Mr. St. Clair is not dead but Hugh Boone, a literate beggar given to quoting the classics, knows exactly where he is and so - eventually - does Sherlock Holmes.

Mr. Holder, a city banker, is Holmes' latest client. A prominent customer left him a beryl-encrusted coronet as a surety against a loan. Mr. Holder took the coronet home for safekeeping and was shocked to find his son Arthur attempting to deface it. Holmes deduces that Arthur is innocent and was only trying to cover up for another family member who has been duped by a smooth-talking thief.

Holmes' brother Mycroft joins him to investigate the murder of Arthur Cadogan West, a clerk in a government defence office found dead by railway lines with pages from a secret submarine plan in his pocket. Holmes believes that the victim was killed somewhere other than the railway track. Discovering a suspect whose house backed on to the line and could have dropped the body onto a passing train roof leads him towards the culprits who really stole the plans and sought to incriminate an innocent bystander.

Charles Augustus Milverton, 'the most dangerous man in London' is a loathesome blackmailer, preying on the weaknesses of his victims. Lady Eva Blackwell asks Holmes to broker a deal with Milverton to retrieve some letters which would harm her impending marriage but Milverton only ups the asking price. Masquerading as a work-man Holmes discovers where the blackmailer keeps his victims' letters and, with Watson, breaks in at night and destroys them. They are interrupted by Milverton and hide. A woman victim appears and shoots Milverton dead. Holmes makes no attempt to stop her nor will he assist Lestrade in the subsequent murder case.

Josiah Amberley, a retired dealer in artists' materials, engages Holmes to find his wife who has run off with his money and a man called Dr. Ray Ernest whilst he was at the theatre. In the course of his investigation Holmes teams up with rival sleuth Baker, employed by Dr. Ernest's family to locate him. Holmes gets Amberley out of the way and breaks into his house, discovering that things are not as they have been explained to him.