Alambic et Torpédo

John Hawkesworth was one of the handful of geniuses the TV medium has produced. Together with Jean Marsh and Eileen Atkins, he fashioned one of the greatest TV dramas of all time, the ORIGINAL Upstairs/Downstairs. He also created some other terrific shows: theFlame Trees of Tika, The Dutchess OF Duke StreetBy The Sword Divided, and , of course, the superb Granada Sherlock Holmes.This is one of his best, and it is now almost forgotten and totally unavailable on DVD. Like The Wild Wild West and The Adventures of Brisco County Junior, it was that rarity, a "steampunk" Fantasy/adventure drama. Hawkesworth created it as a kind of Jules Verne/H.G. Wells flavored detective show. Sam Waterson was wonderful as the brilliant, eccentric, unlikable, "scientific detective" Quentin Edward Deverill, an American expatriate living in late Edwardian/Early Georgian England. Another influence on the show, which apparently no-one has mentioned, were the wonderful "Thinking Machine detective stories of Jacques Futrelle, with their brilliant, arrogant hero, Professor S.F.X Van Dusen. It sis truly sad that this series only lasted six episodes, and we never got to see him battle German spies during World War One.

Everything I remember about it was excellent... great cast with Sam Waterston & George Innes (before he became more familiar to US audiences).... excellent scripts as only the English can do - Edwardian Sherlock Holmes/Lord Peter Wimsey/Albert Campion type mysteries, but with a Jules Verne twist. Sort of like MacGyver would have been had it been in England 80 years earlier... right at the beginning of the scientific/technological revolution of the 20th century.

I've often wondered if the creators of MacGyver saw these shows. MacGyver first aired about 3 years later.

I still have 1 episode on a much deteriorated tape.

Q.E.D. was a brilliant TV series and it truly was one of the very few worth scheduling for! I suspect that in this era of TIVO and recording devices that it would fare much better than it did in 1982. I am eagerly awaiting its availability on DVD!

While it is true that it has some in common with other television shows like The Wild, Wild West, The Bearcats and The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., all of which I am a huge fan of,Q.E.D. had a much more intellectual quality to it. It did not suffer for that, however - the dialog was witty and the action was high. The show ran in the UK as Mastermind, and it did have something of the BBC feel to it, but with better production values than BBC typically had in that era.

I was a nineteen year old lad when this series ran initially, and had much too much to do in my life to make time for television. I remember my dear mother, however, calling me to remind me that Q.E.D. was on, and we would sit on the phone and watch it together. Wonderful memories.

Truly, Q.E.D. is a sad loss and, if it could be done with the same quality and values today, I would love to see it make a return.

I loved this series. I got the last episode on tape before I realized the series was long gone. I have regretted not taping the whole series so many times. I'd love to see it revived and get a chance to relive the plots over again. Where can I get a Boxed Set?? This was one program that would stand the test of time. It's a shame to let it go without giving the next generation a chance to see it. It had meat! Some series on TV now are so much air........QED was meat! It's hard to realize that Sam Waterston was the lead. Seeing him in his role of Jack McCoy is so different from the professor. Sam is one of my favorite actors and anything he does is something special.

For anyone interested in seeing QED all six episodes are available on YouTube. Not great transfers, but beggars can't be choosers.