Snakedance’s Martin Clunes Stars as Arthur Conan Doyle Tonight on ITV!

Christian Cawley is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Broadchurch series 2 may have ended, but ITV has another show with Doctor Who connections to take its place, and tonight Martin Clunes plays celebrated author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Arthur & George. The Sherlock-aware among you will realise the significance of this, and since ITV previously produced (Granada, to be precise, now swallowed up by the ITV monolith) the seminal Jeremy Brett-starring version of Sherlock Holmes in the 80s and 90s, they’ll be keen to get back into the Conan Dyle groove with this three-part adaptation of Julian Barnes’ novel.

Set in 1903 in Staffordshire, Hampshire and London with the backdrop of Conan Doyle’s family home, Undershaw, Sir Arthur joins forces with his trusted manservant, Alfred ‘Woodie’ Wood with whom he has a very strong bond.

Conan Doyle recaptures his zest for life by pursuing and challenging a notorious miscarriage of justice. It is the case of George Edalji, a hard-working solicitor and the son of Hampshire vicar, Reverend Shapurji Edalji and his wife Charlotte. George has served seven years in Pentonville Prison for allegedly mutilating animals and sending threatening letters. The offences have become known as The Great Wyrley Rippings.

Following the death of his wife, Louisa, Conan Doyle has become a “bore and a sulk” by his own admission. All around him do their best to bolster Arthur from his grief and mourning including his beloved ‘Mam’ who implores him to “sink his teeth into something.  If not a book then some new pursuit.”

On learning of George’s plight and glimpsing the headlines concerning the Great Wyrley Rippings, Conan Doyle urges Woodie to arrange a meeting with George, who is released from prison after serving three years of his seven year sentence. Now at 27, George is desperate to clear his name so he can return to his career.

Clunes – who played the unpleasat Lon in Snakedance (1983) and was connected with a role in nuWho for quite some time – is joined by a considerable cast, including Arsher Ali (Four Lions, Complicit, The Guilty, Silent Witness) as George Edalji, Art Malik (The Jewel in the Crown, True Lies, Upstairs Downstairs, Holby City) as his father, the Reverend Shapurji Edalji, Emma Fielding (Silk, DCI Banks, Kidnap and Ransom) as his mother Charlotte Edalji, Charles Edwards (Downton Abbey, Trying Again, A Young Doctor’s Notebook) as Woodie Wood, Hattie Morahan (The Bletchley Circle, Outnumbered, Eternal Law, Sense and Sensibility) as Jean Leckie  and Sandra Voe (Breaking the Waves, Vera Drake, The Winter Guest, Holby City) as Mam.

Of course, since Snakedance, Clunes has forged a huge TV career, with Men Behaving Badly and Doc Martin among his many successes.

Written by Ed Whitmore (Silent Witness, Waking The Dead, He Kills Coppers), Arthur & George begins at 9pm tonight on ITV1, and is the first in a three-part series of one-hour episodes.

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