Sherlock Holmes

‘Brainy's the new sexy. " So declares one of Sherlock Holmes' most formidable, if scandalously flirtatious, adversaries, Irene Adler in A Scandal in Belgravia, a new installment in the BBC's superb drama Sherlock, which returns for a second season Sunday on PBS' Masterpiece Mystery. Scandal will be followed by two other feature-length Holmes mysteries. Irene, played with keenly sentient sensuality by Lara Pulver (True Blood, MI-5), is referring to Arthur Conan Doyle's famed brainiac, but she might as well be talking about the series.

Let's play the "What's in a Name?" game. By now, one and all must know exactly what to expect from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: the grandest detective of them all, Sherlock Holmes. Bantam Classics has reissued the whole canon in two fat, handsome paperbacks, Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volumes I and II (Bantam, $4.95 each). The covers alone, black-and- white photographs lightly tinted, are invitation enough to enter the game. At 924 and 662 pages, respectively, these have to be the paperback bargains of this or any other week.

It's the turn of the century. An English manor house on the moor is plagued by the Baskerville curse. A demonic hound is killing people living in the countryside. Or is the killer human? Inheritances, insect collections and shifty eyes have roles in The Hound of the Baskervilles, which premiered at Hedgerow Theater in Rose Valley. The mystery, a Tim Kelly adaptation of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle original, is suspenseful yet spiced with humor and wit. "Master of detection" Sherlock Holmes, portrayed by a young-looking Paul Kuhn, spouts dry one-liners.

The game is not afoot. Sherlock Holmes , with a ripped Robert Downey Jr. in the title role and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels ' Guy Ritchie at the controls, presents Arthur Conan Doyle's celebrated consulting detective in a new light. No longer the wiry icon in houndstooth cape coat and deerstalker, the reimagined Holmes is a moody, muscular figure, an action hero who dashes around grimy old London town in 1891 dodging fireballs and exiting edifices in great haste - once by diving headlong into the Thames.

The question may arise today. Someone in his scholarly audience at Philosophical Hall may ask William Smith whether he would like to conduct an orchestra of which Sherlock Holmes was a member. The answer would be an emphatic no. But not for reasons one would most likely suppose. "Nothing against Holmes' musicianship," Smith, associate conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, was saying before a rehearsal yesterday at the Academy of Music. "He was a good violinist. It's simply that he would know the score better than I would.

If there is one element missing from the comics shelves these days, it is a good mystery. This is interesting considering that the two major properties translated to the big screen this year - "Watchmen" and "Wolverine" - are based on the genre. With "Watchmen," it's the search for the manipulator behind the scenes; with "Wolverine," it's a journey to rediscover his past. But in retrospect, the mysteries were unsatisfying. "Watchmen's" mastermind turned out to be the only hero who survived an assassination attempt.

They didn't come to bury Moriarty. How could they? His body was somewhere at the bottom of a Swiss waterfall. They didn't come to praise him, although they paid grudging respect to his genius, evil though it was. No, they came to snicker at his effigy, laid out on Joan Kerins' dining room table, covered with a white tablecloth and looking pretty ridiculous in a cardboard skull mask. "He's been dead at least 12 hours," pronounced Dr. Watson, who surveyed the corpse. The merry mourners laughed.

He's already graced the screen, large and small, more than 200 times, so the news that the BBC planned to bring Sherlock Holmes to TV again didn't exactly inspire confidence - especially in the wake of last year's underwhelming Sherlock Holmes-meets- Die Hard action film from Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey Jr. But five minutes into the BBC's miniseries, Sherlock , which will premiere Sunday on PBS' Masterpiece Mystery! , and the whole household was weeping with joy. Even the cat was moved.

SHERLOCK HOLMES liked to say that his unique method of investigation was based on the observation of trifles. The new screen version of the venerable movie staple is based on an observation of its own - that no franchise will nowadays succeed without the enthusiastic support of young males. And so Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.), before he has a chance to make a single brilliant deduction, is tossed into a bare-knuckle brawl with a hairy heavyweight. The scene takes us inside Holmes' head, where he uses his big brain to plot out the sequence of athletic maneuvers that will allow him to duck a punch, break the man's knee, crack his rib, puncture his kidney.

Which recordings should a serious Sherlock Holmes-ophile listen to? There are so many tapes from so many publishers that the solution is anything but elementary. The world's most famous detective, of 221B Baker Street in London, appeared in 56 short stories and three novels. Once the game's afoot, not a moment is lost in introducing the faithful Dr. Watson, the inept Inspector Lestrade and those liter-size helpers, the Baker Street Irregulars. One of the newest offerings is Simon & Schuster's re-release of The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes radio broadcasts that began in 1945, starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson.

‘Brainy's the new sexy. " So declares one of Sherlock Holmes' most formidable, if scandalously flirtatious, adversaries, Irene Adler in A Scandal in Belgravia, a new installment in the BBC's superb drama Sherlock, which returns for a second season Sunday on PBS' Masterpiece Mystery. Scandal will be followed by two other feature-length Holmes mysteries. Irene, played with keenly sentient sensuality by Lara Pulver (True Blood, MI-5), is referring to Arthur Conan Doyle's famed brainiac, but she might as well be talking about the series.

MASTERPIECE MYSTERY!: SHERLOCK. 9 p.m. Sundays through May 20, WHYY.   He's traded in his BlackBerry for an Apple product, but his smartphone's still smarter than yours. He is Sherlock Holmes and as "Sherlock" returns to PBS' "Masterpiece Mystery!" on Sunday, the thoroughly modern "consulting detective" played by Benedict Cumberbatch ("War Horse") is dealing — grumpily — with his newfound fame (following, of course, the resolution of that nasty-looking cliff-hanger from Series 1)

Friday-Saturday It's all red Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion and the Mütter Museum will present The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Scarlet as adapted by Philadelphia actor Josh Hitchens. This is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first Holmes mystery, published in 1887, and it will be performed in the mansion's parlor rather than in a theater. Hitchens stars as Holmes and Jason Graboski as Dr. Watson, under the direction of Jay Efran. In the Maxwell library will be Victorian-era medical equipment such as a stethoscope and syringe, provided by the Mütter Museum.

IN 2009, Sherlock Holmes made a boffo transition to the 21st century as a wise-cracking action hero, cracking as many heads as cases. Some purists were offended on behalf of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but my guess is that Doyle would be thrilled to have invented a character this durable and elastic. Never out of print, inhabited by dozens of different actors in multiple decades, re-imagined for each new generation. The 2009 Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) was one-half of a buddy comedy team filled out by a smarter, tougher Dr. Watson (Jude Law)

He's already graced the screen, large and small, more than 200 times, so the news that the BBC planned to bring Sherlock Holmes to TV again didn't exactly inspire confidence - especially in the wake of last year's underwhelming Sherlock Holmes-meets- Die Hard action film from Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey Jr. But five minutes into the BBC's miniseries, Sherlock , which will premiere Sunday on PBS' Masterpiece Mystery! , and the whole household was weeping with joy. Even the cat was moved.

MASTERPIECE MYSTERY!: SHERLOCK. 9 p.m. Sunday through Nov. 7, Channel 12. ARE YOU in "Mad Men" withdrawal? Not sure what you'll have to look forward to on Sundays, now that AMC's admen (and women) have disappeared for another season, taking their tortured lives and their tawdry secrets with them? Sherlock Holmes may be no Don Draper, but he's reinvented himself far more often. This weekend, he does it again, as PBS' "Masterpiece Mystery!" introduces Benedict Cumberbatch ("Atonement")

Sunday The game's afoot Sherlock Holmes is one of the earliest and greatest superheroes (take away the cape and cowl, and Batman is the Great Detective, after all). Created by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, the crime fighter stalked and deduced through four novels and more than 50 stories until 1927, with a notable gap from 1893, when Doyle famously killed off Holmes, until 1901, when he brought him back and explained his "death" as a three-year ruse. In The Secret of Sherlock Holmes , Jeremy Paul (a writer on Granada Television's Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett, one of the best)

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For Ray Betzner, it's elementary. "He's always the smartest guy in the room. More brilliant than anyone else," Betzner says. "He's in charge of his own world, and he can always figure things out. This is powerful stuff. " Betzner and two other Philadelphians will head to New York City this weekend for the annual dinner celebrating the birthday - this year is the 156th - of Sherlock Holmes, the greatest detective who never lived. Steven Rothman is still trying to fathom the attraction.