Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century – The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire Lot – review

Director: Robert Brousseau

First aired: 1999

Contains spoilers

This cartoon took the concept of Sherlock Holmes and transplanted the character into a futuristic sci-fi setting.

Moriarty

The idea is that in the 22nd Century crime has been almost eradicated due to crypnosis – essentially the brain washing of criminals so that they do not wish to commit crime. Suddenly a crime spree begins and Inspector Beth Lestrade (Akiko Morison) stumbles across the criminal mastermind Moriarty – it is revealed that he is a clone of the original Moriarty.

Holmes

Lestrade knows that Holmes’ (Jason Gray-Stanford) body has been preserved in honey and thus has him regenerated. A police droid (John Payne), which reads Watson’s journals, takes on Watson’s personality and then Holmes and the droid start solving crimes. This episode was inspired by the actual story the Case of the Sussex Vampire.

vampire comic

The episode begins with a security operative at the Sussex data bank (who happens to be reading a comic book called Fangs) seeing a vampire appear – cloaked with burning red eyes glowering froim the hood. When the creature turns to camera we see that it is a fanged creature and discover that it drains all the data out of the database and then crushes a drained data disc. It seems to be able to appear and disappear.

the irregulars

Holmes doesn’t believe in vampires. He does, however, re-read Dracula during the course of the episode. Holmes has a group of helpers, whom he calls the irregulars, and suggests to one of them, Wigins, that as well as bringing stakes (for a stake out) he should also bring holy water – not that it would help against a data vampire. Deidre, another irregular, mentions Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee whilst she is researching.

Is the vampire real and why does Moriarty show an interest in the creature?

vampire

Overall I wasn’t that impressed with this, the whole transplanting Holmes into a new century just didn’t work for me. The animation (a mix of 2D and 3D computer generated) was good enough but the voice acting made me cringe a bit and everything seemed a little too stereotyped in respect of the characters.

4 out of 10.

The episode’s IMDb page is here.