Review: PBS' 'Arthur & George' sees Sherlock Holmes' creator as detective

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle famously disliked when fans assumed that, like his famous creation Sherlock Holmes, he spent his time solving crimes.

But the physician and author did take on the mantle of detective for one famous and strange case, referred to as the Great Wyrley Outrages, in which in 1903, a young biracial man went to an English prison for crimes he did not commit.

The case is dramatized in Masterpiece's brilliant three-part procedural, Arthur & George, an adaptation of Julian Barnes' acclaimed 2005 novel. It premieres at 8 p.m. Sunday on PBS (locally on WHYY TV12).

Featuring an accomplished ensemble cast led by Doc Martin star Martin Clunes as Doyle, Arthur & George is about an Indian-born Parsi English vicar (Art Malik) who lives with his white English wife (Emma Fielding) and their two children in a small parish near Birmingham. The family becomes the victim of a bizarre campaign of intimidation that involves poison letters and dead animals on their steps.

One letter promises that the vicar's son, George (Arsher Ali), will be dead or disgraced for life by year's end.

Sure enough, George is arrested a few months later for allegedly committing a series of vicious knife attacks on horses. The police have no evidence, save for an anonymous tip.

After serving three years of a seven-year sentence, George writes Doyle, asking for help to clear his name.

And so the game begins, as Holmes would put it. Working in a deeply flawed, prejudiced legal system, the duo track down the people who victimized George's family and framed him.

Arthur & George does a lovely job of establishing the two men's different lives. We are shown the battles George had to fight to qualify as a lawyer and the abuse he suffered in prison.

We learn of the death of Doyle's first wife and his growing relationship with Jean Leckie (Hattie Morahan), an intellectual and musician with whom he had carried on a platonic affair of the heart and mind during his wife's long illness.

Ali and Clunes have terrific chemistry as the duo whose relationship grows and deepens through the course of the drama.

A memorable drama with a fascinating mystery at its core, Arthur & George also provides an illuminating, realistic portrait of an era that is often overromanticized on TV.

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Masterpiece: Arthur & George

Premieres at 8 p.m. Sunday on WHYY TV12.

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