The conspicuously well made, briskly-paced TV Movie 'Hands of a Murderer (1990) is a splendidly entertaining stand-alone Sherlock Holmes thriller with some rather attractive period locations, a fine, zesty score by Colin Towns, tip-top thesping from a gifted cast, with Edward Woodward's dynamic, steely performance as the inimitable sleuth being menacingly counterbalanced by a grim-looking, effectively chilling Anthony Edwards as his eternally dastardly, majestically Machiavellian, chaos mongering adversary Professor Moriarty!
With the imminent threat of world war looming, the encrypted contents of desperately important Government documents are covertly being leaked by means nefarious, and it is solely up to the preternaturally perceptive, twin piped perpetrator of crime busting perfection, and his stalwart companion Watson (John Hillerman) to speedily decode this fiendishly baffling, cypher-sealing conundrum! Rarely mentioned, Stuart Orme's persistently gripping 'Hands of a Murderer' remains an engaging, somewhat undervalued entry in the vast canon of filmed Sherlock Holmes mysteries, with the masterful Woodward slyly stealing the show as Baker Street's most conspicuously recognisable resident!
