Review:Murder Rooms/R. Dixon Smith
This review of the TV series "Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes", by BBC2 was written by R. Dixon Smith and published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 10, may 2000).
This review judges Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes as an atmospheric and intelligent fictional TV drama built from a few real facts about Conan Doyle and Dr Joseph Bell. It praises the production and Ian Richardson's performance, while warning that some viewers may wrongly confuse its invented plot and character dynamics with historical truth.
Review
- Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes
- BBC2; 4–5 January 2000
Reviewed by R. Dixon Smith
The young Arthur Conan Doyle studied medicine at Edinburgh University from 1878 to 1882, earning two degrees. While there, he served as out-patient clerk for one of the university's most illustrious medical professors, Dr Joseph Bell. Well known is the fact that Conan Doyle drew on Bell's powers of observation as a source for the analytical attributes of Sherlock Holmes.
Using these slender facts, scriptwriter David Pirie embellished them to create, in a remarkably clever two-part drama, an alternative version of Conan Doyle's relationship with Dr Bell. Although titled Bloodlines during production, its transmission title had been changed to Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes. Bell becomes a well-known amateur detective, consulted by the Edinburgh constabulary whenever bizarre or inexplicable events leave them stumped (in the manner of Lestrade consulting Holmes under the same circumstances). Bell, then, is Sherlock Holmes in another time. and another place. His Watson is his young clerk, Conan Doyle; and consulted they are for Edinburgh is stained by a gruesome, Ripper-like series of murders.
Ripper references abound. The stacked pennies placed near each victim's corpse evoke, supposedly, the Annie Chapman murder; and the 'room of blood' is equally suggestive of Mary Kelly's butchery at 13 Miller's Court. The dénouement reveals that an actual Ripper suspect committed these earlier crimes in Edinburgh, and a title card at the end of the drama asserts that the perpetrator had studied medicine in Edinburgh during Conan Doyle's tenure. In point of fact, he was trained at McGill University, not Edinburgh, and at the time of the Ripper murders was in prison in Illinois.
There is much to praise in Murder Rooms. The dark, murky sets of Edinburgh's seamier side (another echo of Whitechapel and Spitalfields) are beautifully mounted and wonderfully atmospheric. An inspired casting decision led to Ian Richardson portraying Dr Joe Bell, His face does resemble Bell's, and he wears a wiry, white wig clearly suggested by surviving photographs of Bell. Richardson, commanding as always, had played Sherlock Holmes twice before, in 1983, in Mapleton Films' The Sign of Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles. His was a significant contribution, for he brought an abundant, twinkling playfulness to the role. It is easy to believe, watching him portray Bell as Holmes, that he has merely stepped back into the role he left seventeen years ago. Robin Laing, the young actor selected to portray the teenage Conan Doyle, is, on the other hand, badly miscast. Arthur Conan Doyle was a tall, burly man. Surviving photographs of him taken at Stonyhurst and Edinburgh indicate that he was already as solidly built during his student days as he remained throughout his life. Laing is short and too slightly built for the role.
With but a few reservations then, Murder Rooms is marvellous fiction a fictionalised treatment of wisps of fact. Conan Doyle did work for Bell. His father was an alcoholic epileptic. Bell was consulted once-by the Edinburgh police. He was not consulted more than once, for he was not a consulting detective. Conan Doyle was his clerk, not his Watson. The young lady medical student is fictional. No Ripper-like murders occurred in Edinburgh. But as long as one does not confuse fiction with fact, why not propel historical characters into fantasy? The problem, of course, is that some viewers will confuse the two. The logical assumption a newcomer to Conan Doyle may well make is that, when Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes in 1886, he simply pinched the character of Bell, renamed him Holmes, and launched a forty-year career by relating real-life incidents (Bell's) in the guise of fiction (Holmes's). Such an interpretation would do Conan Doyle's genius a great disservice.
Accepted as fiction, Murder Rooms succeeds admirably. Most impressive, perhaps, is author David Pirie's knowledge of things Sherlockian. Entire situations and long stretches of dialogue are lifted from the Holmes canon and simply transposed from Holmes and Watson to Bell and Conan Doyle. A perfect example is Holmes's celebrated deduction in The Sign of Four. Simply by examining Watson's watch, Holmes deduces that it had belonged to Watson's brother, 'a man of untidy habits. ... He was left with good prospects, but he threw away his chances, lived for some time in poverty with occasional short intervals of prosperity, and finally, taking to drink, he died.' This scene and its dialogue have been grafted seamlessly into Murder Rooms, as Bell deduces from an examination of Conan Doyle's watch that it had belonged to the lad's father, now a hopeless alcoholic. Although this threatens at times to become merely an exercise in spotting the canonical reference', for the most part it works.
R. Dixon Smith
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
