Dr Jacques COULARDEAU How can a writer decide to kill his character when this character is particularly famous and well known and admired and considered as a real man? He sure can and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did it without any regret and against all kinds of resistance from everywhere. But that starts in him a phenomenal storm under his skull, a fit of total schizophrenia. He relives his own life and he searches his youth and grown up life to try to understand why he killed his own doppelganger without whom he is nothing but the very shadow of himself, not even a shade cast by a dead tree, just a ghost accompanying his consumptive wife to the grave. That's what this film tells us and the life of Sir Conan Doyle is the centre of the film. The alcoholic father and in those days you ended up in an asylum, locked up behind bars and even with chains and a straight jacket if necessary. His frustrated mother who is paranoid about the end of this man she had institutionalized. The obsession of the young Conan Doyle with his professor, an obsession that was so true, so strong that he had to cannibalize him into his own fictional creation of a character. That's the kind of passion some students have the chance to meet in their studying years: the passionate attraction to a professor who will have the passionate answer of literally enchaining him with his own liberty so that the student will never be able to go away, to go another way because it would mean he is losing his freedom. That's how some students who have some difficulties in their life, family, money, ambition, wavering stamina, difficulty at defining their own future goal and route and following their own trail find the way up and out onto the road that is generally less traveled as the poet put it. Most students never encounter that ethereal passion and most professors never even imagine it can exist. They have vaguely heard of Conan Doyle and Doctor Joseph Bell. Or H.G. Wells and Professor Thomas Henry Huxley. They have also seen, witnessed and at times assisted such a passion but everyone, and first of all the professor and the student, remained quiet about it. They did not speak bout it. They respected it because a passion has to be respected and some of our best minds in this world have been produced by such scholastic passions. That's the fundamental system of English and also American universities: the personal relations between the professors and the students are considered as the most formative part of the teaching and training. At times it does not work at all because the student wavers and steps back, or because the professor is too hard and frightens the student away. It is not a question of gender at all, and in all the meanings of the term or of the term it takes the place of in our politically correct society. Here Conan Doyle after a very successful debut decides to cut off the umbilical cord. But will he succeed? Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

Robert J. Maxwell This is a fantasy, a mosaic made out of three complementary sets of tesserae. We have the "biographer" Selden (Tim McInnerny) whose assignment is to try to dig up any links between Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle (Douglas Henshall) and his fictional creation, the detective Sherlock Holmes, although it is agreed that any results will not be published. There are also contemporary episodes from which Selden is excluded, for good reason. These include a couple of women -- Doyle's own devoted wife and a knockout babe he would like to disarticulate with his tongue. And then there are flashbacks to Conan-Doyle's own earlier years, including his medical tutelage at Edinburgh under Doctor Joseph Bell (Bryan Cox). The three sets of episodes are woven together in a way that is sometimes confusing, the way a dream is confusing, but gradually revealing, until, by the end, all is explained.Or almost all. I didn't get the recurring images of the severed ears crawling with maggots. Okay -- "The Cardboard Box." But why is this image repeated? Why is it IN there in the first place? I missed the first few minutes and perhaps the answer lies there, though I can't imagine how. Of course I could speculate, but it is always dangerous to theorize before one is in possession of all the relevant facts.The most interesting moments -- not necessarily the most dramatic -- are when Dr. Bell pulls of one of those stunts that were later to become inferential staples of the Holmes character. Given a watch to examine, a watch that has been owned by a perfect stranger, Bell complains that the watch has recently been cleaned and this robs him of his most important clues to the owner's character, so he can only say that the man was careless, came from a good family but found his fortunes drop, punctuated by intervals of prosperity, that in later life his habits declined, probably because of drink, and that he had a penchant for 17-year-old blonds all his life. (I made that last one up.) Conan-Doyle must have represented one of the last twitches of the Scottish enlightenment that enthroned reason and empiricism, because when he was old, after he'd lost a son in the war, Conan-Doyle turned to mysticism and the séances that were fashionable at the time.The mystery that is investigated in some detail is the reason why Conan-Doyle decided to "kill" his creation, Sherlock Holmes, at a time when Holmes was probably the most famous fictional character in the world, much as Brittany Spears is now. I failed to catch any big reveal towards the end, but at the climax Conan-Doyle resurrects his detective and they march off together into the sunlight. If the viewer is left still a little mystified, evidently Conan-Doyle wasn't, and that's what counts. However, the detective figure that is Holmes in the last few shots on the Great Grimpen Mire is not by any definition Sherlock. It is MYCROFT Holmes that we see. Who's kidding whom around here? It's an inexpensive production from the BBC and it's about an interesting guy, Conan-Doyle. He was at his peak during the Jack-the-Ripper murders in 1875. Too bad he didn't tackle Saucy Jack. Of course Conan-Doyle can't be counted among the world's most graceful prose artists. On a dark and stormy night, "the wind sobbed like a child in the chimney." (How did the child get into the chimney?) And, true, our introduction to Holmes, in "A Study in Scarlet", makes him look an awful lot like Poe's August Dupin in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." But what does that matter? Conan-Doyle ground out these entertaining mysteries with sprezzatura, hiding his art by making it look so easy, and he gave us some deathless lines. "The curious incident of the dog in the night." "She was always THE woman." And, "Quick, Watson, the needle." (Well, he never said exactly that, but, again, so what?) You may have to be in the right mood to watch this. It's rather slow. But it's a must-see for the Irregulars.

stippy I saw the film for the first time at BBC on July the 27 of 2005. For me it was a good interpretation of the person Conan Doyle,and I truly wonder what the sherlock fans think about it. I also think it is a movie for these fans whether they agree or not what is mentioned.You may ask yourself was A.C. Doyle a strong person or did he put himself in question. However he was the creator of the famous Holmes,but how much of it was a sort of semi-biography? Not the less I strongly put this adaption forward, it is a movie you have to see - even if you aren't interested in the Sherlock Holmes movies or books - look a it , enjoy yourself and have your own opinion of it.

Prof-Hieronymos-Grost The BBC has a very good record when it comes to period drama and so it was with baited breath I awaited this new entry in the Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle filmography....It was written for the screen by David Pirie the writer behind the truly Magnificent Murder Rooms series that also studied the life of Doyle and his reasons for creating his most famous character Sherlock Holmes....but this just wasn't up to scratch,and mainly due to some poor writing but seeing as how Pirie has a good track record I shall put the blame firmly on the Director.....The Hound of the Baskervilles did not herald the come back of Holmes...it was The Empty House....and what about when Doyle's father dies....all his mother wants to talk about is when is he going to bring Holmes back from the dead....not very realistic.....it did look good though and the acting was equally good