Murder Rooms Opening Titles

Another splendid BBC series: Murder Rooms, following an idea of former film critic David Pirie. It's about the young Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Joseph Bell, his Edinburgh teacher to whom he dedicated the first Sherlock Holmes book to and who was one of the models for The Great Detective. Following a two part movie, the BBC produced four episodes of Murder Rooms, which were quite successful. But being the BBC, they shelved further six scripts they already had bought and buried the series ...

The wonderful Ian Richardson played Dr. Bell (much more Holmesian than his very mild-mannered Holmes of the Eighties), Charles Edwards took over the part of Doyle from Robin Laing, who played it in Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes the year before. The series was very Gothic, sometimes creepy, sometimes exciting or funny, and it's a pity they did not continue it. Well, Richarson is dead now, so the series is as well.

I already uploaded some titles, which I now deleted for these from the first regular episode of the series. While the story is fiction, it also claims to show an episode from young struggling Dr. Doyle's life which inspired the Holmes story The Solitary Cyclist. The mix of fact or fiction (there even is one episode with supernatural elements, pointing at Doyle's later believe in Spiritualism) has - apart from Bell - appearing a lot of characters from Doyle's real life during the run, like the quack Dr George Turnavine Budd, Doyle's mad father - an illustrator - or another teacher, the choleric Professor Rutherford, who inspired Doyle's Professor Challenger in three novels and one short story.

Ah, yes. The girl is Katie Blake.

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Entertainment

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• ian
• richardson
• charles
• edwards
• sherlock
• holmes
• arthur
• conan
• doyle
• joseph
• bell
• tv
• bbc
• katie
• blake