7.4 /10 1 Votes
73% Metacritic Genre Drama Country of origin United Kingdom First episode date 2 March 2015 Cast Martin Clunes | 7.1/10 IMDb 79% Rotten Tomatoes Written by Ed Whitmore No. of series 1 Final episode date 16 March 2015 Networks STV, UTV, ITV | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Based on Arthur & George by Julian Barnes Starring Martin Clunes
Arsher Ali Nominations Satellite Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film Similar The Ice Cream Girls, Sherlock Holmes, Grantchester, The Enfield Haunting, The Bletchley Circle | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Arthur & George is a three-part British television drama based on the book of the same name by Julian Barnes, based in turn on the real-life Great Wyrley Outrages. The first episode aired on 2 March 2015 on ITV. It stars Martin Clunes as Arthur Conan Doyle.
Contents
Cast
Fictions
While the source book is not intended to be strictly historically accurate, the TV series contains additional inventions, such as the murder of a blacksmith and the death of a dog walker at the fictional Rugely Falls. Conan Doyle's chief suspect, Royden Sharp, is represented but, to provide a tidy conclusion to the drama, his suicide is invented.
Contrary to some of the fictions depicted in the series, a non-fictional documentary source has been discovered which might have swayed Doyle had it been available to him. Eighty years after Edalji's release, a June 1907 memo by then Home Secretary Herbert Gladstone was discovered which revealed that Gladstone had been privately told by one of the lawyers who had represented Edalji of suppressing as damaging to the defence's case, a letter by Edalji which his brother, Horace, had brought as a specimen of Edalji's handwriting. That letter expressed obscenities and other content similar to ones Edalji was accused of sending. When the 1907 letters started, the lawyer's colleague remarked "He is at it again".
Production
The production filmed sections of episodes two and three in Kent. The Chatham Historic Dockyard was used to film London street scenes, including the outside of the Metropolitan Police station, George Edalji's lodgings and the night sequence in which Sir Arthur secretly follows George Edalji.