6.8 /10 1 Votes
6/10 TV Country of origin United Kingdom No. of series 2 Running time 50 minutes Program creator Hugh Greene | 7.5/10 IMDb Starring Various Original language(s) English No. of episodes 26 First episode date 20 September 1971 Network ITV | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Awards British Academy Television Award for Best Design Genres Anthology, Historical period drama, Crime, Mystery, Detective Similar Sherlock Holmes, Midsomer Murders, Wycliffe, Sherlock, The Inspector Lynley M | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes is a British anthology mystery television series that was produced by Thames Television and originally broadcast on the ITV Network. There were two series of 13 fifty-minute episodes; the first aired in 1971, the second in 1973. The programme presented adaptations of short mystery, suspense or crime stories featuring, as the title suggests, detectives who were literary contemporaries of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes took its inspiration – and title – from a series of published anthologies by Hugh Greene, elder brother of author Graham Greene and the former director-general of the BBC. Hugh Greene is credited on the programme as a creative consultant.
DVD availability
The first series was released on a 4-disc Region 2 DVD set by Network Distributing on 15 June 2009. Acorn Media released a Region 1 version of this set on 1 September 2009. Series Two was released on a Network DVD 4-disc Region 2 release on 15 February 2010; Acorn followed with a Region 1 version on 27 April.