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A rare treat for fans of the great detective and the iconic actor Peter Cushing
The Sherlock Holmes Society of London is delighted to announce the rediscovery of the audio of a lost episode of the BBC TV series Sherlock Holmes (1968). The episode, entitled ‘The Second Stain,’ was the first of the series to star Peter Cushing as the great detective. Believed wiped from the BBC archives in the early 1970s, the episode has been recovered by the Society and restored with the help of Kaleidoscope, the archive television organisation.
The London Society discovered the audio recording on a reel-to-reel tape donated with the Sherlockian collection of a former member. Labelled innocuously ‘9 September 1968’, the Society recognised the date being that of the broadcast of Cushing’s first appearance in the role on BBC television in a series that ran for sixteen episodes. The Society contacted Kaleidoscope who transferred the tape to a digital format and cleaned up the recording. The original reel will be donated to the BBC Archive.
The Society and Kaleidoscope are now preparing a reconstruction of the episode using the restored audio and surviving script. The episode will be premiered at a Sherlock Holmes Society of London event on Friday 6 September 2024 and shown again at Kaleidoscope’s Missing Believed Wiped event in Birmingham on Saturday 7 September 2024, 54 years after the episode was originally broadcast.
Catherine Cooke, Archivist of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, said “Peter Cushing’s performance as Sherlock Holmes was justly iconic so it is a delight to hear once again his expressive tones in a role he loved. With ten of his sixteen episodes missing, it is a pleasure to provide this small consolation to fans the world over.”
Chris Perry, Kaleidoscope, said “We hope that the partial recovery of this lost episode of a much-loved series encourages collectors to root around in their attics and garages. We invite anyone who might have any other recordings of the series, or indeed other lost programmes from the period, to get in touch.”
Kaleidoscope’s public screening of the recovered audio will take on Saturday 7th September 2024, 10am-5.30pm, at the Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham. You can register for the event here: https://macbirmingham.co.uk/cinema/kaleidoscope-the-plays-the-thing
For more information:
Sherlock Holmes Society of London – editor@sherlock-holmes.org.uk
Kaleidoscope – https://www.tvbrain.info/
