Yes, because I had the irresistible impulse to add Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the actual Day 12 will be a little slow in arriving. Too bad we can’t extend days like this in real life!
Then again, since today we found out we have to replace all of this…perhaps not this day in particular….
Today’s prize gives you yet another chance to get acquainted with a lesser-known screen version of Sherlock Holmes. Christopher Lee has had a long and varied film career. When I was a kid, we knew him as Dracula.* Now, movie-goers are more likely to remember him as Count Dooku in the Star Wars series, or as Sarumon in the Lord of the Rings.** But, like his great friend Peter Cushing, he also did a turn or two as the Great Detective, with Patrick Macnee as Watson, in two television mini-series, known together as “Sherlock Holmes: The Golden Years.” Yes, they’re older, but still apparently quite spry, and are summoned both to avert World War (“Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady”)*** and to recover a famous diamond in Africa (“Sherlock Holmes and the Incident at Victoria Falls”). As further incentive, these are digitally restored and include an hour that did not air in the US. Rather like what happens now.†
Not that anyone’s bitter, or anything….
I have not seen these, so I have no idea how good they are. I have…suspicions. But they might be good for a snowed-in day. Perhaps you can have some friends over and play “MST3K: Sherlock Holmes Edition.” It could be that the missing footage makes all the difference. I do know, however, that they can be yours if your correct answer is pulled out of the basket tomorrow. And the question:
How did Christopher Morley describe “The Blue Carbuncle?”
Please send your answer via blog comment, FaceBook PM, or Twitter DM (it likes me again, it seems). Good luck!
John’s remaining mum on this one…but he still wants snacks.
Day 10 Winner!
Congratulations to Joe Revill, who knew that Mrs. Baker had apparently ceased to love her husband due to his possible “moral retrogression [indicated by the broken elastic of his expensive but now out-of-style hat], which, taken with the decline of his fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink….” Mrs. Baker is rather passively-aggressively displaying her lack of affection by not brushing her husband’s hat. Still, methinks that a goose is not going to fix this, Henry.
Footnotes:
*Ok, I’m not actually that old, but this was the Dracula in our library books.
**He may also moonlight as my father-in-law. There’s a rather odd resemblance. “Brett! Your dad is Count Dooku!”
***Morgan Fairchild plays Irene Adler, described on the cover as an “old flame.” Would that we could all have “aged” so well.
†Seriously, Masterpiece. How could you?
The Well-Read Sherlockian 
“Surely one of the most unusual things in the world: a Christmas Story without slush.”
I think he described it as “a Christmas story without slush.”
Morley called it “a Christmas story without slush”. If you hadn’t had a chance to listen to IHOSE episode 49, Burt Wolder does an excellent job reading the Morley essay of the same name. As for Lee and Macnee, I haven’t seen either film–or their music hall act, although I heard they knocked ’em dead from Leeds to Liverpool.