Sherlock Holmes (1939 film series) "Rathbone "was" Sherlock Holmes". The choice of Nigel Bruce as Watson was more contentious, with Davies pointing out that "Bruce's characterisation bore little relation" to the written Watson, even though the portrayal eventually produced "an endearingly avuncular figure". The historian David Parkinson agrees, and wrote that Bruce's "avuncular presence provided the perfect counterbalance to Rathbone's briskly omniscient sleuth". Barnes notes that, despite the criticisms against him, Bruce rehabilitated Watson, who had been a marginal figure in the cinematic Holmes canon to that point: "after Bruce, it would be a near-unthinkable heresy to show Holmes without him". With the combination of
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking is a British television film originally broadcast on BBC One in the UK on 26 December 2004. Produced by Tiger Aspect Productions, it was written by Allan Cubitt and was a sequel to the same company's adaptation of "The Hound of the Baskervilles", made for the BBC two years previously. Although "Silk Stocking" retained the same Dr. Watson, Ian Hart, this time the character of Sherlock Holmes was played by Rupert Everett. In November 1903, young women are being killed in London,