Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Martin Clunes, Charles Edwards, Art Malik, Hattie Morahan, Emma Fielding, Alan McKenna, Conleth Hill, Hilary Maclean, Pearl Chada, Timothy Watson, Matthew Marsh, John Hollingworth, Ciaran Owens, Aaron Chawla, Lewis Crossland, Nicholas Chambers, Simon Meacock, Dean Ashton, Alexander Aze, Abbey Marise Butler, Michael Hadley, Lewis Kempster, Sonia Ritter, Timothy Walker.
Some writer’s lives are even more colourful and incident packed than those they create, some have the lives thrust upon them and some, a select few, such as Arthur Conan Doyle have lives that make reading a sheer work of art.
The life of Arthur Conan Doyle has not been touched upon as much as it perhaps could have been, for starters it has been well over a decade since the late, great Ian Richardson produced some of his most sterling work outside the original House of Cards in the homage to Doyle’s mentor Dr. Bell in Murder Rooms, and with so many version of Sherlock Holmes having been filmed, the danger of losing the man to Time who bought the greatest consulting Detective to life is a distinct possibility.
Arthur Conan Doyle was so much more than Sherlock Holmes, although the British public, certainly in Victorian and Edwardian society didn’t think so and that was very much the evidence placed before the viewer in the television adaption of Julian Barnes’ novel Arthur and George.
It is with certain irony that more people will have heard of the cocaine taking violin playing Detective who lived at 221B Baker Street than the man who brought him to life in Strand Magazine and yet Doyle was not one for being shy and out of the public eye, especially when shaken out of his melancholic grief after his wife passed on from Tuberculosis.
Stirred into action after reading a note from a solicitor asking for help in clearing his name after three years in prison for the brutal and sickening act of animal mutilation and ripping, Doyle investigates and finds disquiet in rural Staffordshire, disquiet and nauseating allusions to race. It is the question of race in which much of the case revolves around and as the duel heritage of the unassuming solicitor becomes more apparent to Doyle’s quick mind, it is to be wondered at just how far as a society we have come when terms such as the derogatory half-caste gets bounded about in early 20th Century broad Midland’s accent.
With Martin Clunes capturing the writer very well and enjoyable performances over the three episodes from Art Malik, as Rev. Shapurji Edalji, Arsher Ali as convicted solicitor George Edalji and the sometimes under-appreciated Charles Edwards as Doyle’s secretary Alfred Woods, Arthur and George is one of those rare and delightful television one-offs that are as good as the book in which they spring from.
If there is talk of carrying the programme forward, it is to be hoped that the producers at least keep it as authentic to the life of Arthur Conan Doyle as much as possible. There would be scant reward in commissioning another series if the tale isn’t at least as true to life as this particular sojourn into the life of one of the all time greats of Detective fiction.
Arthur and George is well produced, intelligently scripted and very well performed, a true delight in the 2015 television schedules.
Ian D. Hall