Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady

Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady and its sequel, Incident at Victoria Falls (1992), are a pair of TV films made in 1991 under the banner Sherlock Holmes the Golden Years.^[1] Harry Alan Towers was executive producer and Bob Shayne was the writer on both.

Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady
Based on	Characters by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Screenplay by	Bob Shayne H.R.F. Keating
Directed by	Peter Sasdy
Starring	Christopher Lee Patrick Macnee Morgan Fairchild John Bennett Engelbert Humperdinck
Music by	Detto Mariano
Original language	English
Production
Producers	Frank Agrama Riccardo Coccia Daniele Lorenzano Mirjana Mijojlic Alessandro Tasca Harry Alan Towers
Cinematography	Brian West
Editor	Marcus Manton
Running time	187 minutes
Production companies	Harmony Gold Finance Luxembourg S.A. (as Harmony Gold), Banquet et Caisse D'Epargne de l'etat, Banque Paribas Luxembourg, Silvio Berlusconi Communications
Original release
Release	6 December 1991 (1991-12-06)

Plot

Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson are elderly gentlemen in 1910 Vienna. Both are involved independently with foiling Balkan terrorists. They reunite by chance with “The Woman”: actress Irene Adler. They save Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria from an assassination at the opera house and thus delay the onset of World War I.

The film also featured a number of historical characters, including Eliot Ness and Sigmund Freud.

Cast

• Christopher Lee as Sherlock Holmes
• Patrick Macnee as Dr. Watson
• Morgan Fairchild as Irene Adler
• John Bennett as Dr. Sigmund Freud
• Engelbert Humperdinck as Eberhardt Bohm
• Tom Lahm as Eliot Ness
• Jenny Quayle as Lady Violet Cholmondley
• Jerome Willis as Mycroft Holmes
• Margaret John as Mrs. Hudson
• Charlotte Attenborough as Margaret Froelich

Production

It was initially announced that there would be an eight-hour miniseries entitled The Golden Years of Sherlock Holmes.^[1] The project series of eight one-hour episodes soon morphed into two three-hour films.^[1]

Filming

It was shot back to back with Incident at Victoria Falls.^[1]

Locations

Filming locations were in Austria, London and Luxembourg.

Home media

Both were released in the next two years and there were drastically edited versions released by Vestron Videos.^[1] The full versions are now available on DVD.