elaby | Voice actor squee

*flails*

Okay, so I hadn't listened to the BBC Radio version of "The Valley of Fear" before, because it's my least favorite of the novels and even if it's got a good mystery, it's half boring America crap and doesn't even have any really good character stuff aside from the bit where Holmes asks Watson if he minds sleeping in the same room as a madman. And while the BBC version left that line out (curses!), it far exceeded itself in all other areas.

janeturenne, I think, told me to listen to it if only for Mr. Mac's sake, and as in everything, she's 100% spot on. He's delightful. They did a good job with the storytelling by switching off between Holmes and Watson and the events in America every track or so, and that way I didn't get dreadfully bored. The radio plays have an amazing capacity to interest me in the stories I wouldn't usually be interested in just by compelling voice acting, and this was no exception.

But the most amazing part of it was something I had to wait for until almost the very end, and god, it was worth the whole thing. In the story, the scene where they find out that Jack Douglas has been lost overboard is fairly rushed and not overly exciting; Holmes suspected it would happen and knew Moriarty was behind it, and that was that. In the radio play, he and Watson were alone when they received the news, Watson writing and Holmes going through the evening post. He doesn't say anything, but you can hear in Holmes's breathing that he's upset, and Watson asks him what's wrong. As he's explaining it, the writers go the route they've gone before, that makes me love them: Holmes blames himself, says that Douglas would still be alive if he hadn't uncovered the deception of his "death," and Watson tells him that's nonsense with the kind of anxious frustrated concern that Michael Williams accels at. "You mustn't do this to yourself," he says then, with a softness and significance that makes listening to any amount of secret society blather worthwhile. "You musn't." And Clive Merrison continues to do that thing where all he has to do is breathe and you know exactly what expression is on Holmes's face.

*awe*