The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (TV Series)

The Rivals Of Sherlock Holmes (TV Series)

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes is a British television series that was co-produced by Thames Television and originally broadcast on the ITV Network. There were two series of 13 fifty-minute episodes; the first aired in 1971, the second in 1973.

The programme presented adaptations of short mystery, suspense or crime stories featuring, as the title suggests, detectives who were literary contemporaries of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes took its inspiration – and title – from a series of published anthologies by Hugh Greene, elder brother of author Graham Greene and the former director-general of the BBC. Hugh Greene is credited on the programme as a creative consultant.

The authors and detectives featured on the programme include:

• Robert Barr (Eugene Valmont, French private investigator)
• Guy Boothby ("gentleman thief" Simon Carne)
• Ernest Bramah (blind detective Max Carrados)
• R. Austin Freeman (forensic detective Dr. Thorndyke; con artist Romney Pringle)
• Jacques Futrelle (Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, the Thinking Machine)
• Adalbert Goldscheider, a.k.a. "Balduin Groller" (Viennese sleuth Dagobert Trostler)
• George Griffith (Inspector Lipinzki)
• William Hope Hodgson (Carnacki, the ghost hunter)
• Fergusson Wright Hume (Hagar Stanley, a.k.a. Hagar of the Pawnshop, the Gypsy detective)
• C. J. Cutliffe Hyne (ship's purser Mr. Horrocks)
• William Le Queux (Duckworth Drew of the Secret Service)
• L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace (trade investigator Dixon Druce)
• Arthur Morrison (Horace Dorrington, crooked private detective; Martin Hewitt; Jonathan Pride)
• E. Phillips Oppenheim (John Laxworthy, reformed crook)
• The Baroness Orczy (Polly Burton from The Old Man in the Corner stories; Lady Molly of Scotland Yard)
• Max Pemberton (professional jeweller Bernard Sutton)
• Baron Palle Rosenkrantz (Lieutenant Holst, Danish police detective)