If you are interested in Holmes, or the way directors discover films, or both...
A walk through the Brett Holmes' adventures is, well an adventure. And there's every bit as much detective work involved. In these, you have three principles: Brett, who has some energy and an engaging notion of the character, a director and a screenwriter. As with all British mystery series, the game here is to have a different writer and director for each "episode." Perhaps there were production reasons for this.
Brett in this period was fat and dull from the drugs he was taking to control his condition, the very condition that made him and interesting Holmes. Internally exploding.
The writer is Bowen. I have encountered him many times before in various detective screenplays. each time I have been repelled by his decisions. Mostly, they are decisions to cut the viewer out of the discovery game. This is pernicious business, these decisions.
Film, even pedestrian TeeVee films, can be sharp, can help you butcher your demons, can start wildfires that cleanse. But only when the viewer is given power (and implicitly, respect). Often, this power comes free with the detective form, where we collaboratively weave narrative -- even what narrative means -- with the writer.
Bowen refuses us this, and I hate him for it because he actively scours it out, removes it.
So under normal circumstances, I'd be waving you off of this, especially since you likely will be seeing it on DVD and this is paired on a disk with a horrible episode, one of the worst experiences of all.
But here's the magic of film. Even a sleeping actor and a woefully mistaken writer cannot kill a project if the director (and his team) have vision. And this young director does. He would go from this to TeeVee detective projects with good writers, then on to some very competent movies indeed, a best picture Oscar.
So look at this and put yourself in the place of the director instead of the writer as you normally would do. And struggle with him around the barriers the world places in front of us, barriers that prevent a coherent narrative (in the form it would be called a "solution").
Its quite a miracle. There's one huge misstep, when the body is discovered. But look at how he lingers on a minor character, the innkeeper's wife. There's a whole story, a whole world in a few succinct moment with her.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.