just watch it!

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

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

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

Written by the writer who penned the excellent Murder Rooms series which chronicled ACD's adventures with Doctor Joseph Bell, I was looking forward to this and I wasn't disappointed. It was quite slow moving, with a lot of emphasis on Doyle's frustration at Sherlock Holmes which was very accurate and excellently portrayed. It was an interesting character study and very well shot ( on digital video, unusual for a period piece ). The acting was excellent all round, particularly Tim McInnery and Brian Cox although the actor who portrayed ACD, whose name I cannot remember impressed me no end. An excellent character study which has about the same amount of twists as any normal Sherlock Holmes case. Do see this if you get the chance

Plus I'm not entirely sure if this is based on truth or if it's all just a complete fantasy. The idea of Doyle's life being picked apart by an apparition of the very character he created but it's a bit far-fetched to be believable. Still, it's interesting at the very least.However, very sad people like me will notice many anachronisms. Such as The Hound of the Baskervilles being hailed as Holmes' return from the grave even though it is set before his encounter with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. I did find it weird that Brian Cox plays Doyle's mentor Doctor Joseph Bell while his son Alan Cox played Watson in Young Sherlock Holmes.Some nice locations and warm photography are about all this TV movie has to offer in terms of atmosphere. It's sparsely populated and some things are never quite clear. Like what was that gunshot when Kingsley briefly disappeared in the woods? Did that manifest in the cupboard actually exist? How did an apparition of Holmes, that only Doyle could see, end up questioning his mother? The score is also minimal, but could have been taken a bit further without being intrusive.For Holmes/Doyle fans and the merely curious alike.