Are you jumpier than a guilty perp as you impatiently await the third-season premiere of BBC’s “Sherlock” on January 19th? Or “Elementary,” which resumes its second season Jan. 2 on CBS?
Then, dear Holmes fan, check out “How Sherlock Changed the World” — the PBS special airing this Tuesday — which tracks how the 19th-century sleuth spawned a global fascination with criminal forensics that’s stronger now than ever.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published “A Study in Scarlet,” his first novel about brilliant and eccentric detective Sherlock Holmes, in 1887, the year before the Jack the Ripper murders would terrorize London. Various crime experts discuss the discrepancy between Holmes’ painstaking approach to clues and the bumbling manner in which violent crimes were actually handled at the time. (In short, they say, there was really no such thing as an off-limits “crime scene.”)
Narrated by Andrew Lincoln of “The Walking Dead” (in his actual British accent), the special relies very little, disappointingly, on footage from the BBC’s Holmes series; instead, it mostly uses murky reenactments, with actor Edward Cartwright playing the sleuth.
More engaging is the enthusiastic testimony of various forensics specialists on how influential Holmes really was in the development of modern-day techniques — they all view the fictional character as a role model, and a founding father of investigative technique.
Holmes was inarguably ahead of his time: Doyle had the detective cooking up a chemical test to determine if a substance was blood, decades before it ever actually existed. Holmes’ use of deductive reasoning, knowledge of ballistics and focus on seemingly insignificant details have become de rigeur in piecing together crimes today.
Forensic scientist Henry Lee, who’s been called “The Sherlock Holmes of Taiwan,” describes his own Holmes-like process of solving one bloody crime in Florida, while another expert discusses the 1954 case of Sam Sheppard, a man who was convicted of murdering his wife before spatter analysis absolved him.
Also of interest here: the real-life inspiration for Holmes, and Doyle’s own foray into crime investigation.
It may not boast the sparkling repartee we love about our two current Holmes incarnations — nor the sheer gross-out factor of the many hit crime-scene shows currently running — but this special may well inspire you to hunt down the original source material.