‘Lucy Worsley’s Holmes vs Doyle’ headed to PBS this December!
Lucy Worsley Holmes vs Doyle. Photo: BBC Studios/PBS
Unfortunately, it’s not a new series of Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman but, for my money, it’s the next best thing as the brilliant Lucy Worsley will tackle the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and his literary creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in an upcoming 3-part documentary on PBS.
Doyle came to hate Holmes and killed him off in print only to be forced to revive him upon public demand. In Lucy Worsley on Holmes vs. Doyle, historian Lucy Worsley investigates the never ending love-hate relationship in a parallel biography of Holmes and the man who created him.
The series follows in the footsteps of another PBS documentary series, Agatha Christie: Lucy Worsley on the Mystery Queen, with Worsley as the ideal investigator unearthing Holmes’ origins in Doyle’s early life as a medical student, unpicking his early stories and revealing the dark underbelly of late Victorian Britain – from drug use to true crime.
Worsley will explore in-depth Doyle’s growing disenchantment with his detective creation and desire to distance himself from Holmes and investigates the darkness of his later stories, mirroring the reality of Doyle’s life after the loss of his eldest son, his turn to spiritualism and declining public appeal and spat with a famous magician.
Sounding equally as excited as she did leading up to her Agatha Christie series, Worsley said “I have had a life-long crush on Sherlock Holmes, so it was the biggest pleasure imaginable to explore his life, death and resurrection. While exploring his life and times, I also got a real and sometimes troubling insight into manliness, Empire and Victorian values. I find his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, to be a complex, contradictory and endlessly fascinating character. “
In Episode 1, “Doctor and Detective” (December 8), Lucy unearths Holmes’ origins in Doyle’s early life as a medical student in Edinburgh. She unpacks the early stories, revealing the dark underbelly of late Victorian Britain, from drug use to true crime. She explores how Doyle infused his stories with cutting-edge technological developments and traces the author’s growing disenchantment with his detective, heading to Switzerland to visit the site of one of the most famous deaths in literature.
In Episode 2, “Fact and Fiction” (December 15), Lucy explores Doyle’s desire to distance himself from Sherlock after the detective’s apparent death at the Reichenbach Falls. From the delights of the ski slopes to the horrors of the Boer War, she reveals how far Doyle went to make himself the hero of his own story. He even took on the role of detective himself in one of the most important legal cases of the 20th century.
In the finale, “Shadows and Sleuths” (December 22), Lucy investigates the return of Sherlock. Doyle began the Edwardian age delighting in all it had to offer, but as the First World War approached, the darkness of the later stories mirrored the reality of Doyle’s life. After losing his eldest son, he became an evangelist for spiritualism, and his star declined after a public spat with a famous magician. Sherlock Holmes, in contrast, found a life beyond his author on stage and screen.
Lucy Worsley’s Holmes vs. Doyle will premiere on Sunday, December 8 for three consecutive Sundays at 8pET/7pCT on PBS and your local PBS station including KERA in North Texas.
In: Mystery
