Denis Shaw Season: Sherlock Holmes - The Beryl Coronet

King Edward VIII at his investiture as Prince of Wales, 1911

Next in this series of posts about TV shows in which the actor Denis Shaw has a part, we have this episode of the 1964-5 series Sherlock Holmes, starring Douglas Wilmer as the detective and Nigel Stock as Dr Watson. This series rather tends to be seen in continuation with the 1968 series starring Peter Cushing as Holmes, possibly because Stock remained Watson in that show, in amongst doubling for Number 6 in The Prisoner.

I like the story of this one enormously, because it is far from being a linear detective story. Put simply, a banker named Alexander Holder gives an unnamed client who calls at his home a loan of £50,000, accepting as security a coronet, which is a smaller crown worn by lesser royalty or nobility. Part of the coronet is stolen, and Holder suspects his own son of stealing it.

What I love about it is that far from the single line description I have given we have a complex web of possibilities. We have Holder's son's obvious gambling problem, which his father refuses to continue to enable by lending him any more money for his gambling debts. We have the household, which would obviously have been a den of sexual tension becauwse Holder's niece also lives in the house and both Holder and his son want her to marry the son but she won't. We have the obligatory shifty servant. Of course the real point of the story is not this web of complexity but the real storyline is more about the British Empire and the great and the good who have fallen on hard times and been forced to get loans. The coronet, far from merely being an expensive trinket, represents the State and the Empire, and that is what is at risk here. The peer or minor royal who has given the coronet as security is never identified. That would be indiscreet.

Shaw's role in this show is to play a most ungentlemanly gentleman's gentleman in the employ of the actual villain of the piece, who I won't identify. Honestly apart from its other qualities this show is worth watching for Shaw's part. He is absolutely perfect as the completely ungracious servant and I love him in it.

I have no criticism of Shaw but I do have a criticism of the show, which I'm not sure is a criticism of Conan Doyle of the production. It's the coronet. I read on Wikipedia that the £50,000 loan in the 1890s equates to about £7,000,000 today, and the coronet is described as being worth twice the value of the loan. In reality lords' robes and coronets frequently come up for sale at auction and only cost a couple of thousand quid. On the other hand, despite the coronet supposedly being so valuable, the actors all handle it as if it is a prop. It doesn't at all give an appearance of weight of gravity. So perhaps there's both a plot issue and the handling of the coronet in the production is wrong.

Otherwise, this is an excellent adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes story, with an excellent minor role for Denis Shaw.

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