Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases
Holmes and Watson, in the real era of each case
- 57episodes
- 26 h 16 minof drama
- 1941–1987setting years
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are back at 221B Baker Street, working new cases in the real era of the crime that inspired each story. A summer of World Cup fever in 1966, a sleet-soaked December in 1976: every case keeps the news, the gadgets and the weather of its own time, while Holmes keeps his method.
Each episode starts from a real crime and keeps its period, then changes every name, place and figure and invents the solution. These are fictions inspired by true events: no real person is portrayed, and nobody real is accused of anything. Episodes run about half an hour, every case stands alone, and you can start anywhere.
It is a classic Sherlock Holmes radio drama in the old-time radio tradition: a full multi-voice cast, a light score that stays under the story, and sound design that puts you in the room.
The writing, voices, music, sound effects and artwork are AI-generated, and a human listens to and revises every episode. How it is made.
Episodes in Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases
The Case of the Empty Gilt Frames
Eight borrowed paintings vanished overnight from an exhibition in Aix-en-Provence, and the curator has come to Sherlock Holmes at Baker Street, asking that nobody know. She has not telephoned a single lender; she promised each of them that every picture would come home. Who took the pictures, and why may she not ask the police?
The Case of the Saint's Day Ransom
The curator of Aldermoor House calls up to Sherlock Holmes's window at Baker Street: its Van Brandt was stolen last night. By the next morning a letter to the newspaper threatens to burn the girl in the picture on Saint Patrick's Day. Who would steal a painting that can never be sold, and what does the thief want in return?
The Case of the Unwilling Traitor
Every newspaper in Europe can tell you where the man who hunted spies for Bonn is tonight: East Berlin. So his wife flies to Baker Street with a trunk and two winded porters, and asks Sherlock Holmes for the one thing the papers cannot tell her: how he got there. Did he go over of his own accord, or was he taken?
The Case of the Five Silent Sets
Has London's radioman in occupied Holland sold every agent dropped to him?
The Case of the Midnight Gramophone
Two five-pound notes bearing one serial number land on the table at Baker Street, and a Cairo inspector wants Holmes in Egypt before the week is out. Who is flooding wartime Cairo with money that its own bank swears it never prints twice?
The Case of the Hallmoor Pass Tunnel
Within a day of a naval captain's death on the night express, the Salzburg police have the sleeping-car attendant in a cell, because they say only his key opens the door the captain went out through. His daughter, a nurse at Guy's, is frightened by how fast the police moved. Is the man with the key the man who used it?
The Case of the Falling Ash
A comedian still in his studio make-up climbs the stairs at Baker Street to say he keeps losing at cards at his club in Beverly Hills. He accuses nobody, yet he says he knows his own bad luck, and this is not it. Why would a man who blames no one ask Sherlock Holmes to look into his losses before he flies home on Sunday?
The Case of the Parcels from the Sky
A café keeper from Calder Street climbs the stairs at Baker Street with real coffee and a plea to Sherlock Holmes: the police have told a woman that the dead man is her brother, yet would not let her look at him. Why would the police name a man before anyone who loved him had seen his face?
The Case of the Valdek Window
At dawn Prague telephones a woman in London: the minister she is to marry has killed himself, and the verdict comes in the same breath as the news. She wants Sherlock Holmes to look before he is buried, but Prague has changed hands and an English detective asking questions would have no standing. Why was the case closed so fast?
The Case of the Raspberry Halves
A New York defence lawyer flies the Atlantic in winter to fetch Sherlock Holmes for her client, a building superintendent whose tenants drop bottles on his stoop and whose wife's own brother swears he is a spy. With the trial only weeks off, what could a London detective find that no cable could carry?
The Case of the Abandoned Overcoat
A Soviet defector walks out of a Washington restaurant on a raw December night, leaving his overcoat on the chair; by morning he is inside the Soviet compound, and the young American who lost him has flown to London to ask for Sherlock Holmes. What kind of man walks off into the cold and leaves his coat behind?
The Case of the Spoiled Cream Pastries
A night nurse in Houston telephones Baker Street the day a young woman dies, asking Sherlock Holmes to come before the burial; by breakfast the dead woman's father has sent his own lawyer across the Atlantic to ask for Holmes too. Houston has police and pathologists of its own, so why do they want a London detective?
The Case of the Golden Mesa Jackpot
Who secretly opened the Golden Mesa slot machine before its jackpot pull?
The Case of the Three Silent Days
A week after the Damascus army's radio-silence drill, a ruined wireless importer arrives at Baker Street with three seized ledgers and a whisper of treason hanging over him. Is he the traitor the army is hunting, or only the man it has settled on?
The Case of the Vanished Coffin
A widow telephones Baker Street after dark to say someone has taken her husband out of his grave, and the man she asks for was his friend. Who would steal the one thing, as Watson puts it, that no one on earth could sell?
The Case of the Twice-Rung Bell
Eighteen masterpieces have vanished overnight from a country house in County Wicklow, and it is the housekeeper, not the family, who has crossed the Irish Sea to fetch Sherlock Holmes. What does a servant want him to find?
The Case of the Folded Newspaper
A policeman flies the Atlantic with an envelope too secret to telegraph: a scientist is to meet a foreign contact at a London museum gate at eleven at night. Who is the man, and what will Holmes find waiting at that gate?
The Case of the Returned Letter
In January 1943 the Admiralty drags Sherlock Holmes across a winter Atlantic to New York over one letter that came back undelivered. Why would the Royal Navy send for a detective over a returned letter, when New York has police of its own?
The Case of the Altitude Ransom
A manager and his secretary fly halfway round the world to fetch Sherlock Holmes to Sydney, where a stranger on the telephone kept an airliner circling in the sky until three hundred and fifty thousand dollars was paid in a dark lane. Who could make an entire airline obey a voice?
The Case of the Seven O'Clock Caller
Her employer was shot and disfigured in his Rome office on Saturday night, and a husband and wife in custody each swear the other went in alone. Whose word can Sherlock Holmes trust?
The Case of the Six Unsigned Letters
Why does the son of a murdered machinery dealer send across Europe for Sherlock Holmes, with a young newsreader and a running cab meter, rather than trust a telephone with what he knows?
The Hostages Who Said No
Why would four hostages refuse to be rescued from the man who is holding them in a bank vault?
The Case of the Saturday Salesman
Eleven classified folders have vanished from a locked vault at a defence plant in California, and the lock shows no sign of force. Three men hold the combination, and the company's own security chief has flown to London to say so. Who among them could have opened it?
The Case of the Whit Sunday Revolver
On Whit Monday evening a typist with a bandaged hand brings Sherlock Holmes a letter the police laughed at: an apology from whoever shot a racing driver outside a Hampstead pub. Why would a gunman stop to say sorry to a stranger?
The Case of the Cedar Cove Prowler
A mother flies through the night from New York to Baker Street, leaving her son unburied, to insist that his death in a dark upstairs hall was no mere tragedy. Why does she trust a London detective over the police who have already named it an accident?
The Case of the Thursday Club
Was the Kincaid heir kidnapped — or did he stage it?
The Case of the Easter Telegram
A village doctor and his housekeeper lie dead in a Bavarian villa on Good Friday, and the police have called it a shooting followed by a suicide. Why does the doctor's son fly to Baker Street, begging Holmes to come before the funeral?
The Case of the Abandoned Raincoat
On a wet June evening in 1949, Inspector Lestrade climbs to Baker Street clutching a sodden parcel he will not set down, hours after a passer-by was shot dead in Marlow Street. Why has Scotland Yard come to Holmes for something other than a name?
The Case of the London Glove
Who emptied the embassy's code room while smoke filled the upper floors?
The Case of the Eleven O'Clock Blast
Who blew up a yacht moored inside a quiet California harbour, with two people aboard, at eleven o'clock on a Saturday night?
The Case of the Star-Cut Glass
The whole island has already decided who killed Sir Gideon. Did his son-in-law really do it?
The Case of the Carriage Clock
Did the vanished section head drown in the Rhine, or is he still alive?
The Case of the Thirteen Jars
Did the widow of Loudun really poison thirteen of her own?
The Case of the Venetian Cord
Who bound and strangled the millionaire in his Larkin Avenue bedroom?
The Case of the Banker's Last Signature
A rain-soaked bank cashier arrives at Baker Street with a dead chairman's confession that names every theft, yet stops a hundred million dollars short of what the bank lost. Who gains when a confession cannot add up?
The Case of the Empty Clothes
What became of the Member of Parliament who vanished from a Miami beach?
The Case of Lot Twelve
Hours after Saturday's race at Gum Flats, the chief steward of the Moreton Turf Club flies halfway round the world to Baker Street, insisting the result cannot be allowed to stand. What happened in that race that a steward would cross the world rather than trust his own stewards' room?
The Case of the Diplomatic Baggage
On a thundery September evening in 1982, a secretary telephones Baker Street: Chief Ojo has been seized from the pavement outside his own front door, in full view of her office window. Why would kidnappers work so openly, with a witness looking on?
The Case of the Marlowe Flagstone
On Easter Eve 1941, a woman walks from Stepney to Baker Street to say her sister went out after dark on Good Friday and never came home. What took a woman out into the blackout on the one night when London stood still?
The Case of the Dark Kitchen Stair
A nanny goes down to a Belgravia basement to make a pot of tea and never comes back up. Her mother rings Baker Street before the police have finished with the house. Who was waiting on the dark kitchen stair?
The Case of the Lakeside Daybed
Within hours of his wife's death, a doctor in Ohio puts an overseas call through to Baker Street and asks Sherlock Holmes to come before "the Cleveland papers decide what happened." Why is a grieving husband racing the newspapers instead of the police?
The Case of the Deaf Vault
Someone has stripped the vault of a Nice bank of twenty-nine million francs and posted the bank's English clerk a photograph of the wreckage, with one word on the back: Merci. An inspector of the Police Judiciaire carries it to Baker Street and lays it face down on Holmes's table. Why would a thief go to the trouble of thanking the clerk?
The Case of the Furled Umbrella
Hours after a broadcaster dies of a fever, his widow telephones Baker Street because Scotland Yard has stopped listening. Yet the Yard's own inspector turns up at her door after midnight. Who is uneasy about a death everyone is calling natural?
The Case of the Misprinted Caption
A will in a dead billionaire's name turns up on a lobby desk in Salt Lake City, and the man it makes rich begs the police to burn it before he will so much as call a lawyer. Why would an heir refuse a fortune before he has even read the page?
The Case of the Vanished Admiral
Nine days after the Admiral vanishes from a London gallery wall, a letter reaches a Fleet Street night desk demanding £210,000 for pensioners' television licences, and Scotland Yard calls it the work of a crank. Why would a thief who wants the money announce himself to a newsroom?
The Case of the Midnight Lagoon Rendezvous
A day after his brother is shot dead in Rio de Janeiro, a man calls at Baker Street and begs Sherlock Holmes to act where he officially may not, afraid the killer will "walk free." Why does he fear a killer who has not yet been found?
The Case of the Clockmaker's Ticket
What sent the Marenna to the bottom in two minutes, and why has an insurance director flown through the night to put the question to Sherlock Holmes?
The Case of the Silent Farmhouse
A baby girl is found alive in her cot, fed and crying, while her parents lie dead half a mile down a New Zealand country road. A cable reaches Baker Street asking Holmes not to clear a man, but to say who fed the child. Who tended her through that night?
The Case of the Salt Lake Parcels
Hours after his wife dies in a parcel blast on their own porch, a Utah widower rings Baker Street and begs Sherlock Holmes to come before the police settle on the people who lost their money with him. Why does a grieving man turn away the answer he has been given?
The Case of the Stopped Clocks
A ship that could not sink is towed into harbour with not a soul aboard: her lamps still switched on, coats still on their hooks, both her clocks stopped at the same minute. Twenty-two people sailed in her, and none came home. Was it the sea that took them — and why would anyone abandon a ship that would not go down?
The Case of the Five-Barred Gate
Threatening letters in block capitals, a ewe's head spiked on a farm gate — and then a bomb beneath the driver's seat of a sheep farmer's car. Who planted it?
The Case of the Loyal Parrot
A bank's chief cashier swears that a voice all India knows from the wireless telephoned him and ordered fifty lakh rupees sent off in one steel trunk — and the office it seemed to speak for says no call was ever made. Was there a call at all, and if there was, whose voice was on the line?
The Case of the Blue Shawl
How could a telegram from Moscow quote a promise a young dancer had written in only one place — a sealed letter he left at his Paris hotel desk?
The Case of the Late Bus Home
Who would shoot a quiet hotel waiter dead beside his pregnant wife — and why has she scrawled across the newspaper report, “This is not my husband”?
The Case of the Empty Socket
Thirty crates went home to Moscow, and the socket in the radar nose came back empty. Who took the great valve from the Soviet jet at Hyakuri?
The Case of the Forty Empty Desks
Half a million pounds of motorists' claims money has vanished from a collapsed insurer, and the auditor who signed its accounts begs Sherlock Holmes to prove him not innocent, but merely a fool. Where did the money go?
The Case of the Silent Doorbell
A woman living alone in Rome is strangled in her flat, and the London claims man whose company insured her can find nothing wrong with the claim. So why can't he bring himself to sign it? Who killed her?
