MRS. HUDSON IN THE BORDERLANDS

 

The actor Pat Keen, who has died aged 79, had a successful career in supporting roles for more than half a century. She possessed an uncommon versatility, as happy in Chekhov and Ibsen as she was feeding lines to Les Dawson, whom she adored. For all that she was in demand in later years to play harridans and busybodies, she never resorted to caricature. She believed in the people she portrayed, breathing life into the stereotypes beloved by too many writers of comedy for television. She refused to take the easy route of playing for laughs, whether on stage or screen.

- Paul Bailey

The Guardian

Like Gary Burghoff as Radar O'Reilly in "M*A*S*H" the movie and the TV series, Pat Keen played an established character from BookWorld in both the Cineverse and in Earth Prime-Time. She was Mrs. Hudson, the landlady of 221 B Baker Street where Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson resided. She played the role in several episodes of 'The Baker Street Boys' as well as in "Without A Clue" (in which the real brains of the investigative team was Dr. Watson.)

However, as was the case with Radar, she can't be the same Mrs. Hudson in both productions. And that's because the characters surrounding her were played by different actors. Michael Caine was the clueless Holmes in the movie (with Ben Kingsley as Watson), and Roger Ostime assayed the role (as a supporting character) in the TV series, which was more about the Baker Street Irregulars.

So she was a Borderlands character without an actual TV dimension to connect the two. Her Mrs. Hudsons were doppelgangers of each other.  But they had no genetic connections to all the other Mrs. Hudsons who populated both the Cineverse and the other TV dimensions.

BCnU!