Review by lhcao2

To start with, this series is undoubtedly a fine series, not a bit like American cheap thrillers; Ian Richardson plays Dr. Bell extremely well, in fact, so well that I think his adaptation of Dr. Bell is much better than his previous adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. Plots are good, characters interesting, setting&costumes acceptable...but the drawback is that this series is too traditional. There's death, love, conflicts, climax and anticlimax, prejudice and misunderstanding, among many other things that are typical of ordinary TV series. The whole series seems like the work of an aspiring writer, promising to be great, but still needs to be polished. To come to the point, as a big fan of Sherlock Holmes stories, I am not in the least interested in how Doyle gains the affections of his fellow female student, or what his school life is like etc. The most things I want to know are METHODS-what exact methods Dr. Bell uses in solving crime mysteries(there's not enough shown in the series)-and which parts of the crime mysteries are later reflected in Doyle's Holmes stories&c, &c. In short, I want the series to be more documentary-like, I don't want it to be an ordinary crime-mystery one.