Jeremy Brett, Judy Dench and I Breathed the Same Air

I don't have to tell regular readers of this blog that I love Most Things British.  Their regular television is not much better than the US--but when they have a winner program , they have a real winner.

Yes--for this generation of viewers,  must see TV  is Downton Abbey.  Previously it had been Brideshead Revisited or the Forsyte Saga.  If you have not seen either of these series, do yourself a favor and view them.  Superior even to Downton in my book.

Some of us remember the flawless characterization of Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes in many series of his casebook in the 1980s and early 1990s..  Before that, the  entertaining and authentic performances of Dame Judi Dench in As Time Goes By entertained both sides of The Pond.

In the early 1990s, my mother and I and Dear Husbola went to London in December.  At the same time Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke were performing in the west end a play about Sherlock Holmes and reprisign their rolles as Sherlock and Dr. Watson.   I was groupie.  My mother was a groupie.  We met him backstage and I prayed Dear Husbola took an in-focus photo of Mother, Sherlock and Me.  He did.

Years earlier, I was trolling around the off-west end theatres in London looking for obscure performances.  Little did I know that this petite theatre in the round was featuring  a woman named Judi Dench in a play and that she would years later become Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown  and James Bonds' M in several films.

Jeremy Brett died suddenly in the late 1990s.  Judi Dench is still around--thank heavens.