Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a name that everyone knows.
He’s most famous for his creation, Sherlock Holmes, a master detective with strong powers of observation and intuition.
He’s less famous for his own detective work, but not for much longer.
ITV have bagged the rights to Julian Barnes’ novel – Arthur & George – about a real life miscarriage of justice that Conan Doyle helped overturn. They’ve even bagged veteran actor Martin Clunes to play the acclaimed writer, and The Missing‘s Arsher Ali as George, a young man who has been incarcerated for a crime he did not commit and wants to clear his name.
We spoke to Clunes about his new role at a press conference in London.
The series starts in the early twentieth century after the death of Conan Doyle’s wife, which proved a troubling time for the writer. Clunes explains, “He’d hit a wall at home, his other books didn’t fly, his wife died, and then this awful guilt-chasm opened up.”
Unable to find solace in writing, Conan Doyle involved himself in the case of a young Indian man, George Edalji. He had been convicted of the Great Wyrley Rippings, a series of horse mutilations. Despite a lack of evidence George’s race counted against him and he was imprisoned. Conan Doyle investigates the case, but getting the judicial system to overturn George’s conviction is far harder than he expects.
Speaking about stepping out of his comfort zone in the role, Clunes joked, “If it hadn’t been my wife [Arthur & George producer Philippa Braithwaite] asking me to do it I probably would’ve done a runner – but I didn’t want to lose face.” He later said he was honestly “thrilled” about the role.
Speaking about Conan Doyle as a person, Clunes admits he was an unusual man, saying, “He was buried standing up. He lobbied in parliament to give every police force a psychic. He went to war out of curiosity. He bought a motorcar without having seen one before. [He was] a bit of a Douglas Adams. Impetuous but thorough. He did it all.”
Clunes is fantastic in the lead role, bringing warmth to a character that is naturally closed off, and light humour to a show that is dark in tone. Likewise, Ali is a man of many talents and it’s great to see him play someone suffering from a miscarriage of justice rather than being the cause of one.
It’s an enjoyable hour, which really comes into its own by the dark ending of the first episode. The adaptation has had to lose a few key aspects of the book, including discussions of spirituality, childhood struggles, and the lack of meetings between the two protagonists, but author Julian Barnes told us he was fine with the changes, saying, “All the differences I notice in this first episode from my book seem to be extremely positive. It’s a substantially different medium and we should salute that and all the changes.”