As other IMDb commentators point out, this episode of Sheldon Reynolds' Sherlock Holmes series starring Ronald Howard is indeed a lightweight, lighthearted version of the fictional world Arthir Conan Doyle created. I don't think that's a bad thing, as these episodes are often just what they intend to be: very creative and highly enjoyable viewing. This isn't the best episode of the series, but it is still good fun.
The opening scenes are essentially comedy material using Holmes and Watson as familiar characters to mine for, and it's quite well-written and well-played comedy material. Holmes displays quite a sense of humor, coyly pretending to me more interested in fishing than the murder Watson thinks he should investigate (with Watson deducing this is a ruse) and tacitly conspiring with his friend to make a messenger boy think they are crazy. It's amusing to learn that Watson is such a railway timetable boffin.
The rest of the episode, however still pleasant viewing, is not as good as it could have been. It's been pointed out that in places it resembles the first half of "The Valley of Fear," but here is a place where fidelity to Doyle might have hurt it -- there is a little too much plot to get across in the time allowed without skipping over some explanations and resorting to some expository passages. Though there are only two real suspects, Holmes deduction scenes are well set up and play very impressively -- but there just wasn't space for the mystery itself to develop naturally.
We're supposed to be an an English village (Holmes even spends some time discoursing on the quaintness and humor of the names of English villages) but because once we get there one of the two main characters we meet (Maurice Teynac as Morelle) speaks with a French accent it feels more like we are in provincial France (the country where the series was actually filmed).