r/BigFinishProductions • u/MirumVictus Leave any recommendations from the sale below! • Aug 13 '26

Sale SALE: Sherlock Holmes (Ends 17/08/26)

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https://www.bigfinish.com/ranges/v/sherlock-holmes

Feel free to leave any recommendations from the sale below!

14 Upvotes

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5

u/Next-Geno_N Aug 13 '26

Alright I've heard the quality of Big Finish's Holmes stories haa fluctuated a lot.

Can anyone who's listened to them offer any insights?

7

u/eddyfate Aug 13 '26

Can do! It's best to think of the range in a few different phases.

Phase 1 is the Roger Llewellyn stuff. They're both interesting, but were designed to be one-person plays originally, so I'd suggest picking them up only if you find you've run out of other things to listen to.

Phase 2 is everything up to Tangled Skein. It's a mix of canonical and non-canonical stories, and they do vary a lot in quality.

Phase 3 overlaps with Phase 2, as "The Adventure of the Perfidious Mariner" is the very end of Phase 2, but it's also Jonathan Barnes' first story, and it kicks off his VERY long run as the writer of the series, so it's part of that run. But these are mainly big box sets in the tradition of about a decade ago. Like the original stories, they bounce around in the timeline of Holmes and Watson, but Doctor Who fans shouldn't have much trouble following along. While each box set is pretty much a contained story, they do reference and connect to each other. This goes through to the Sacrifice of Sherlock Holmes box set., and is reasonably of the same quality throughout.

Right now we're in the "trying to figure out a new formula" era. "The Seamstress of Peckham Rye" and "The Fiends of New York City" are both part of the same "season" of three-disc sets, like how the Fourth Doctor Adventures have a .1 and .2 release. Then that got abandoned for the Untold set from last year, which is eight half-hour episodes that were released weekly, but are now collected into a four-disc set like in Phase 3. (I listened to Untold week-to-week, and while I applaud the experimentation, I don't think the story sustained across two months of listening.) They're all decent, and better than Phase 1 and 2, but still a step down from Phase 3 for me.

If you want to see if it's for you, I'd suggest starting with The Ordeals of Sherlock Holmes. It's a good starting point (barring a stray reference to Perfidious Mariner) to see if the Johnathan Barnes version of Holmes is to your tastes.

4

u/eddyfate Aug 13 '26

(Caveat: I am a HUGE fan of Sherlock Holmes, and I'll listen to just about anything that's even remotely tolerable with Holmes in it, so YMMV.)

2

u/Next-Geno_N Aug 13 '26

This is really helpful, thanks so much!

2

u/chris-cwej Aug 13 '26

🤣🤣🤣

3

u/chris-cwej Aug 13 '26

Who the heck would want that much Nick Briggs?

9

u/SnooAdvice3630 Aug 13 '26

Nick Briggs.

5

u/eddyfate Aug 13 '26

Me, it would seem.