A young copyist is found dead beside the railway lines on the Underground with a massive head wound but little bleeding. He has no ticket but he does have plans for the Bruce-Partington submarine in his pocket. Is he a traitor? How did he board the train without a ticket? Who killed him and why, or was it an accident?
It's well that "The Bruce Partington Plans" is the finale of "The Return of Sherlock Holmes," which has such fine episodes as "The Man With The Twisted Lip," "The Abbe Grange" and "The Second Stain." And Freddie Jones' delightful performance in the otherwise lackluster "Wisteria Lodge." It's a worthy climax.
Brett by this time has developed that delivery problem that makes him sound like he suffers from a perpetual head cold, but it's not eggregious here.
The episode opens with the reintroduction of Charles Gray as Mycroft. I was never sold on Gray's Mycroft; Gray's been too common in movies and TV to be definitive in the way Brett, Burke, Hardwicke and Jeavons are. But he and Brett seem to enjoy acting together, which gives them that glow of brothers who aren't terribly close but who are always glad to see each other.
The story is one if Holmes' triumphs of detection. It's a bit of a shame Lestrade couldn't join us; no doubt Jeavons' schedule precluded it. Amanda Waring is affecting and she does her best with lines like, "if you could only save his honor," which rings so hollow in a more cynical age where honor is treated as a joke.
They do a good job to keep anyone who hasn't read the story guessing at the culprit, making even the ticket-seller at the station a suspicious character.
This is one of those Brett/Holmes stories so delicious one doesn't need to go back to ACD to enjoy it as it should be enjoyed. It's good (enough) as an adaptation and it stands up alone on its own merits.
BTW, the story contains one of ACD's greatest howlers, where Mycroft says the submarine is one of Britain's most closely guarded secrets but then is astounded his brother hasn't heard of it. But his brother is Sherlock Holmes the omniscient. My brother wasn't even Lestrade.
Apart from that, this is a beautiful story beautifully told, unlike some of the travesties like "The Six Napoleons," which should have been left untampered with (though, to be fair, tampering with "The Priory School" improved it).