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A quick little post that I've been meaning to make for a while: I've found four places where one can download Sherlock Holmes audios, all of them set in canon time (if not necessarily canon stories).
- The BBC Radio adaptations of the entire canon with Clive Merrison as Sherlock Holmes are available on iTunes (yes, in America too.) Excellent full-cast audio work, and they've added little fillips to the stories (mostly to give Watson a tiny bit more to do) that I enjoy, without mutating the stories into something uncanonical. The novels have been heavily abridged to get them down to a 2-hour runtime; the shorts are closer to unabridged.
- Great Detectives of Old Time Radio Podcast. Plays a variety of 40s-era radio mysteries; link goes direct to the Sherlock Holmes page. Quality of such old recordings can be iffy and they're peppered with on-air advertisements (one in which Watson painstakingly explains how to use instant coffee). On the upside: free. Variable Holmeses. Contains a mix of canonical and extra-canonical stories.
- Big Finish Sherlock Holmes. To be honest, I found the first season of these underwhelming; the first two stories were so meta that they didn't hold my attention; the final one was an adventure, but it was a compilation of two theories that I'm so familiar with that I found no "there" there. The upcoming season appears to be focused more on original mysteries, which is what I'd prefer. Subscriptions also come with a download link for a very nice Speckled Band. Either Nicholas Briggs or Roger Llewellyn as Holmes. Full cast (but often a very limited cast).
- Jim French Productions: The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Full cast; usually with John Patrick Lowrie as Holmes. If you can get past Holmes and Watson having American-flavored accents (something that crops up in Great Detectives as well), these are my personal favorites. I originally discovered these when I reviewed Volumes 1-8 for Reviewing the Evidence; I recently went back and updated my collection to have something to enjoy as I work on the house. Jim French also did an abridged Hound; other than that, they're all original stories, sometimes based off the famous unrecorded mysteries.
This is in addition to the CD-only The Undiscovered Railway Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes as read by Benedict Cumberbatch, available on Amazon.com/.co.uk. (BC is the only voice, and shows off his range of accents.) I also have a notice from Amazon.co.uk that there's a CD of Holmes stuff read by Derek Jacobi; I keep waffling over my love of Jacobi vs my lesser enthusiasm for those particular stories.
(...not to mention the gallons of all-era podfic out there)
- The BBC Radio adaptations of the entire canon with Clive Merrison as Sherlock Holmes are available on iTunes (yes, in America too.) Excellent full-cast audio work, and they've added little fillips to the stories (mostly to give Watson a tiny bit more to do) that I enjoy, without mutating the stories into something uncanonical. The novels have been heavily abridged to get them down to a 2-hour runtime; the shorts are closer to unabridged.
- Great Detectives of Old Time Radio Podcast. Plays a variety of 40s-era radio mysteries; link goes direct to the Sherlock Holmes page. Quality of such old recordings can be iffy and they're peppered with on-air advertisements (one in which Watson painstakingly explains how to use instant coffee). On the upside: free. Variable Holmeses. Contains a mix of canonical and extra-canonical stories.
- Big Finish Sherlock Holmes. To be honest, I found the first season of these underwhelming; the first two stories were so meta that they didn't hold my attention; the final one was an adventure, but it was a compilation of two theories that I'm so familiar with that I found no "there" there. The upcoming season appears to be focused more on original mysteries, which is what I'd prefer. Subscriptions also come with a download link for a very nice Speckled Band. Either Nicholas Briggs or Roger Llewellyn as Holmes. Full cast (but often a very limited cast).
- Jim French Productions: The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Full cast; usually with John Patrick Lowrie as Holmes. If you can get past Holmes and Watson having American-flavored accents (something that crops up in Great Detectives as well), these are my personal favorites. I originally discovered these when I reviewed Volumes 1-8 for Reviewing the Evidence; I recently went back and updated my collection to have something to enjoy as I work on the house. Jim French also did an abridged Hound; other than that, they're all original stories, sometimes based off the famous unrecorded mysteries.
This is in addition to the CD-only The Undiscovered Railway Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes as read by Benedict Cumberbatch, available on Amazon.com/.co.uk. (BC is the only voice, and shows off his range of accents.) I also have a notice from Amazon.co.uk that there's a CD of Holmes stuff read by Derek Jacobi; I keep waffling over my love of Jacobi vs my lesser enthusiasm for those particular stories.
(...not to mention the gallons of all-era podfic out there)
