Having watched the film I had to check the IDMB reviews..

and, Yes, I agree, overall an enjoyable film but am I the only one to notice that Martin Shaws performance has been dubbed? Listen and watch closely. Certainly not his voice, (even allowing for an American accent,) and the lip sync is slightly out on occasions.

However this only detracts slightly from the film.Ian Richardson certainly holds the whole thing together with a fine performance. The village scenes are possibly over populated but I get the feeling that the production is aimed also at the American market and therefore some aspects of English country life have been over emphasised to fall in line with the American view of our country.

Fortunately I was blessed with a lousy memory, because I read the original Conan Doyle novel of this story, and watched at least 3 or 4 screen-adaptations already, but I still manage to get surprised by the denouement every single time! With regards to my expectations towards this 1983 made-for-TV version, they were merely just set on average. Not because I don't have faith in the skills of director Douglas Hickox and his crew, but rather because the older versions of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" are so phenomenal! Notably the 1939 version (with Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce and Lionel Atwill) and the 1959 version by Hammer studios (with Peter Cushing, André Morell and Christopher Lee) are awesome movies, and I simply assumed this TV-movie had few to nothing to add.

Well, I love to be proven wrong! This is a really solid and respectable interpretation or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most legendary novel. It's a very faithful adaptation, and the overall macabre atmosphere of the story is done justice by the exquisite use of décors, scenery and filming locations. The nightly escapades in the Devon' moors are effectively unsettling, the flashback - with footage of a drowning horse - is haunting, and the sequences with the titular hound are spooky. If you like fog, eerie howling, sinister old mansions and more fog, you will LOVE this film! The only blemish I can give, perhaps, is that both the Holmes and the Watson characters are blindly modeled after how Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce depicted them. Ian Richardson and Donald Churchill, although both giving stellar performances, don't seem to bring any of their own input in their characters. Apart from that; - great movie! Very much recommended.