Now here's an original idea-- Sherlock Holmes after a modern-style serial killer! By now half a dozen Holmeses have caught a veritable busload of Jack the Rippers, not to mention Holmesian imitators like The Alienist or From Hell, so to make that plot work one would need an especially novel and surprising solution for the great detective to unravel. And here we get... the oldest, most obvious cheat of a solution imaginable. Even genteel Masterpiece Theatre viewers must have been throwing shoes at the screen.<br /><br />But in fact the plot isn't all that's wrong with this Holmes adventure-- nearly everything about it is misconceived. Rupert Everett, excellent at playing dilettantes and spoiled playboys, fails to convince us that he has the brainpower to be the great detective (and his voice is oddly tentative, especially after Jeremy Brett's barking-- why won't someone cast Richard E. Grant as Holmes? He would be ideal, and might have half saved this.) The female lead is irritating, there is nothing of Conan Doyle's cleverness or borderline surreality in the clues, most of the remaining characters are colorless-- its sole virtue is a stalwart Watson in the form of Ian Hart, a worthy companion to modern non-simpleton Watsons such as Robert Duvall, James Mason and Edward Hardwicke.