TV & RADIO
Jonathan Wright previews upcoming programmes on history and family history
Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley On The Case Of Conan Doyle
BBC Two
Sunday 10 December
Historian and presenter Lucy Worsley has long been drawn to Sherlock Holmes’ “compelling weirdness”. But as her new three-part series explores, the detective’s creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, didn’t share her devotion. Indeed, by 1893 he had “come to hate” Holmes.
Fortunately, the author had come up with a way to get rid of his creation once and for all – or so he thought. In the short story ‘The Final Problem’, the detective falls to his death at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. This, a now rich and successful Conan Doyle hoped, would free him up for more serious literary endeavours. But his gambit didn’t work, and he eventually resurrected Holmes in great part because of the negative public reaction.
So what are we to make of Conan Doyle’s love–hate attitude to Holmes? And what are we to make of Conan Doyle himself? Following on from her 2022 series Agatha Christie: Lucy Worsley on the MysteryQueen, the historian tells the parallel stories of author and detective. “While exploring [Holmes’] life and times, I also got a real and sometimes troubling insight into manliness, empire and Victorian values,” Worsley noted when the show was announced. “I find his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, to be a complex, contradictory and endlessly fascinating character.”
In programmes that see Worsley picking through archives and meeting with experts, she not only charts an author’s disillusionment with his own success, but looks at how he played in goal for Portsmouth (really) and became a detective himself via his involvement in a famous legal case. She also explores how the darkness of the writer’s later stories and an interest in spiritualism related to tragedy in his own life.
Also, any fans of Conan Doyle will be keen to see writer–director Mark Gatiss’ new horror story for Christmas. Lot No. 249, which stars Kit Harington and Freddie Fox, adapts a tale by Holmes’ creator.
The Crown
Netflix
Streaming from Thursday 14 December
It may allow us to eavesdrop on events of national and international significance, but at heart The Crownis a family saga. It’s also a story that, in focusing on Elizabeth II’s reign, has reached its natural conclusion. Following November’s episodes chartin
