I can't even

I can't ever speak to me

I can't ever speak you for me. Thank you for me. I'm As our story begins, a group of young gypsies make off with a stash of stolen horseshoes and nails,

the spoils of fevery from the local blacksmith. When the smith finally tracks them down,

he's confronted by their protector, an intimidating brute known as Dr. Grimsby Roylet.

As he tries to retrieve his property,

Roylet handily dispatches him, tossing him into a nearby stream. And thus begins the adventure

of the speckled band. In writing the screenplay for this episode, Jeremy Paul was confronted with the challenge

of creating a fresh and satisfying adaptation of one of the most popular and most filmed stories

in the canon. In the introduction to his 1991 script book of the Speckled Band,

the writer reminisced. Canvassing among friends, I found a similar response to the news that I was

doing the Speckled Band. It's the one about the snake, they all said confidently. What snake, I

asked. What does the snake do? And to whom? And why? Who does the snake belong to?

And what is its mischief and its ultimate fate? I said. Most of them looked at me blankly.

They were lost. We think we know the stories. All the familiar ones, but we don't at all.

That's what makes rereading them such a joy.

I find every time that a return to a story carries its own recharged pleasures, the sheer

suspense of how it works out, Holmes' particular deductive skills Watson's participation and in the case

of the speckled band their raw courage in the face of terror and always I

savor the incidental delights of their journey towards the deenomae with the speckled

band what I shall treasure is a superbly demonic performance from actor

jeremy kemp as holmes's adversary dr grimsby roilett and the usual excellence of our two

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