Review: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle turns sleuth in ‘Arthur & George’ miniseries on PBS

The collected works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are a gift that just keeps on giving. Especially to television, where “Elementary” (CBS) and “Sherlock” (BBC America) currently deliver two very different iterations of the world’s first and most famous consulting detective.

As it turns out, Doyle didn’t just set the gold standard for fictional sleuths, he also provided the first detective-writer-as-actual-detective story line.

Long before characters like Ellery Queen, Jessica Fletcher or Richard Castle were mere notes on a page, Doyle used the powers of observation and deduction he had granted Sherlock Holmes to solve an actual crime and change the British judicial system.

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Based on the Julian Barnes novel of the same name, “Arthur & George” is a lovely, lyrical and occasionally provocative fictionalization of Doyle’s exploits that should thrill a myriad demographics — Sherlock Holmes devotees, of course, but also fans of costume drama, the Edwardians and any series that rhapsodize the British countryside. The three-episode drama begins Sunday on PBS.

Especially thrilling is the beloved “Doc Martin,” whose star, Martin Clunes, plays Sir Arthur with the sort of ram-rod mustachioed stoicism that can only conceal a thoroughly romantic belief in the power of justice.

When a series of farm animals are brutally killed, blame quickly falls on a young Anglo-Indian solicitor, George Edalji (Arsher Ali). The son of a village pastor, George is quickly convicted and sent to prison.

Suffering at the same time, though in a far different way, is Doyle (Clunes). At the height of his fame, he is powerless to stop the suffering of his dying wife. Suffering that he suspects was compounded by the knowledge that he loved another.

Though never technically unfaithful, Doyle had been long enamored with Jean Leckie (Hattie Morahan), and guilt makes his grief paralytic. He cannot woo, neither can he write.

Fortunately, faithful secretary Alfred (Charles Edwards) knows what the great man needs: a project. George’s young sister Maud (Pearl Chanda) has written Doyle for help. George has served his time, but his law license has been revoked and his reputation destroyed, all for a crime he didn’t commit. Doyle takes one glance at the clippings and, as his fictional scion would say, the game is afoot.

Not everyone is pleased, of course; Doyle is warned that by playing Sherlock Holmes he will ruin his career. Even Alfred is wary — George is an odd fish, stiff and remote. He is not interested in addressing issues of race, he just wants his job back. But Doyle, who firmly believes he can tell when a man is lying and when he is not, swears to right this wrong.

Those who know something of Doyle’s life may wonder a bit at his claim to know when someone is lying — Doyle was a longtime believer in spiritualism and as an older man would famously fall for the Cottingley Fairies photographs.

But that’s years off and “Arthur & George” is far more criminal procedural than biopic, with the added charm of having the man who essentially invented the genre at its center. Racism, classism and the closed ranks of virtually every segment of British society add flavor, but only as they apply to the matter at hand. For all his quirks, George is more device than character, though Ali (last seen as the predatory journalist in “The Missing”) does a lot with a little.

The emotional engine of the series is the romantic subplot. Though used to explain why Doyle would go to such lengths to clear a stranger’s name — as recompense for the larger injustice of loving another woman more than his wife — the platonic but passionate affair provides the real tension of the series. This is mostly because Morahan is a master of passionate tableaux, able to fill stillness and silence to the space just before the bursting point and leave it there.

Clunes is a terrific Doyle who remains, with all his complexities and contradictions, as fascinating a character as Sherlock Holmes. His scenes with Morahan are so vibrant with the unspoken that it is, at times, difficult not to wish for a series called “Arthur & Jean.”

Which, given the serial nature of this story, and the subject’s personal propensities, is not, one hopes, out of the question.

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‘Arthur & George’ on ‘Masterpiece Mystery!’

Where: KOCE

When: 8 p.m. Sunday

Rating: TV-PG-V (may be unsuitable for young children with an advisory for violence)

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