TV

Watch with PBS Passport

This episode is available to watch with PBS Passport.

Sign up

Already have an account? Sign in

Janice Allan

Janice Allan

There's a lot of weirdness in the later Sherlock Holmes stories – the Casebook of Sherlock Holmes. There are vampires, even a bit of science fiction. To Sherlock Holmes fans who liked Holmes’s rationality, this must have seemed like a really strange new departure? Lucy explores the story

The War

The War

Dressed in military attire, Arthur heads to the front line during the first world war. Much to Arthur's disappointment, he was visiting as the author of Sherlock Holmes, not as a soldier fighting for his country. After meeting and greeting the troops at the trenches, Arthur turns his

George Edalji

George Edalji

The public had wanted Arthur to channel his inner Sherlock for years. In 1908, he received another letter from a fan, who’d read The Hound of the Baskervilles while in prison. His name was George Edalji. George believed he’d been wrongly accused of a crime and thought Arthur

Waterfall

Waterfall

Sherlock Holmes is back from the dead! After mounting pressure from fans across the world, Arthur Conan Doyle finally revives the great, fictional detective in a new story published in The Strand Magazine. Visiting the Reichenbach Falls, the site of Sherlock's "death," Lucy Worsley explains how

The Gun

The Gun

So how did the first story in the new collection – 1903’s The Empty House – measure up? It weaves together Sherlock’s return, with a classic murder mystery. Lucy re-stages the crime with Jonathan Ferguson, the keeper of firearms at the Royal Armouries. Does Arthur’s science stand up to

Hound of the Baskervilles

Hound of the Baskervilles

Arthur thought he had the makings of a great ghost story. There was this phantom hound, and there was the spooky setting of Dartmoor. It is of course Hound of the Baskervilles. At the heart of this gothic tale there was a mystery to be solved, and one man would

The Bodybuilder

The Bodybuilder

If Sherlock Holmes had been about brains, this was about brawn. Arthur became the judge of Britain’s very first body building competition at the Albert Hall. Can you image 80 men standing on pedestals, wearing leopard skin? But what was the aim of it?

War is Coming

War is Coming

With the Boer War looming, Arthur vows to leave Sherlock behind for good and applies to the war office to fight for his country instead. Both Doyle and Holmes' futures are uncertain, but is this Arthur's chance to finally become the hero of his own story?

Richard Pooley

Richard Pooley

Arthur's head and heart are in conflict with one another. On one hand, Arthur believes Sherlock is preventing him from being taken seriously as a writer, but – on the other – the detective has made Arthur rich beyond his wildest dreams. Lucy, alongside Arthur's step great-grandson, Richard

Killing Sherlock

Killing Sherlock

How do you kill the world's most famous detective? Lucy Worsley visits the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, the site where Arthur Conan Doyle finally decided to have his fictional sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, killed following a dramatic confrontation with prolific criminal, Professor Moriarty.

Sue Black

Sue Black

Sherlock Holmes solved some of his most challenging cases through his careful observation and masterful skills of deduction. However, would this fictional detective's methods hold up in the non-fictional world? Lucy Worsley and Professor Sue Black discuss how some aspects of Sherlock's investigative tactics are still