The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes radio show (1939-1950, United States)

Episode time

30 minutes

Language

English

The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1939 review

The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes radio show

Famous Baker Street detective Sherlock Holmes and his faithful companion Doctor John Watson face a wide range of criminals in London and other parts of the United Kingdom, wherever the new mystery will draw them. With Holmes’ unique gift of observation and analytic mind, they can match anything that is put in front of them.

This wasn’t the first radio adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle stories, hence the New Adventures bit in the title. Between 1930 and 1936 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes were broadcasted with Edith Meiser as the scriptwriter, who kept that role for most of The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. In both cases, the episodes were adaptations of original Doyle texts, but also scripts written by Meiser.

The short, 30-minutes long, format did not leave a lot of space to delve into the depths of the stories, but with surprising twists and kept in original style, they were entertaining audiences for 11 years with over 200 episodes produced (over 300 according to other sources). Also, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, who played Holmes and Watson between 1939 and 1946 in The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, at the same time also played those same roles in the series of movies based (in most cases) on Arthur Conan Doyle novels.