MASTERPIECE: "ARTHUR & GEORGE"
PBS, 8:00 p.m. ET
MINISERIES PREMIERE: Presented as a three-part miniseries on PBS, this British import is the latest entry in the Sherlock Holmes canon – but this time, it’s not about the famous master sleuth, but about his literary creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. At the latter stage of his career and fame, Doyle, already awarded his “Sir” honorific, actually did a piece of amateur investigating himself: taking on what today we would call a “cold case,” of a Scottish-Indian solicitor, George Edalji, convicted of animal mutilation and other odd crimes of intimidation. The young lawyer, played by Arsher Ali, is the George in the title to Doyle’s Arthur – and even though George has been found guilty and served his full sentence, Doyle takes on the case to exonerate George’s name. Doyle’s personal assistant, Alfred Wood, serves as his personal Watson, and the two take off on this fact-based but very freely adapted mystery novel, written only a decade ago by Julian Barnes. “I can still tell a good story from a bad one,” Doyle says to Alfred, weighing the veracity of one person’s testimony – and Arthur & George is a good one. The cast helps immensely in this regard. Wood is played by Charles Edwards, who has established his ease with period pieces as Michael Gregson on Downton Abbey – and Doyle is played by Martin Clunes, the very long-running star of yet another well-received British import, Doc Martin. Check local listings.