tek's rating: ¾

Houdini & Doyle, on ITV (UK) / Global (Canada) / FOX (USA)
A.V. Club; HouDoyle; IMDb; TV Tango; TV Tropes; Wikia; Wikipedia; Wild About Harry
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; iTunes; Vudu; YouTube

In 1901, a murder mystery that possibly involves a ghost comes to the attention of both Arthur Conan Doyle (the famous British writer) and Harry Houdini (the famous American illusionist and escape artist). Doyle is a believer in the supernatural, while Houdini is a skeptic. The latter comes to London to investigate the case, and each of them tries to prove whether the killer actually was a ghost or not. Chief Inspector Horace Merring is not happy to have them involved, nor is Sergeant George Gudgett. But I guess Houdini is friends with Nicholas Hampstead, the head of Scotland Yard, so Merring has little choice but to allow them to work on the case. But rather than working with Gudgett, the Chief Inspector assigns a constable named Adelaide Stratton to work with them. She is apparently the first woman to ever work as a police officer there, and Merring doesn't like that.

Well, I don't want to reveal any details about the cases that Houdini, Doyle, and Stratton investigate together. But I will say that they're not all about ghosts, even if there is some potentially supernatural aspect to each case. I'll also say that it seems a bit odd to me that Houdini would stick around after the first case. Like, doesn't he have anything better to do? Maybe in America? But I guess he's interested in Adelaide. And in spite of (or maybe because of) their differences, I think he enjoys working with Doyle. And I should mention that Doyle's wife has been in a coma for some time now, which is apparently why he's so desperate to prove there is life beyond death. As the season progresses, we also learn that there's a mystery surrounding the death of Stratton's late husband, Benjamin Graves. Meanwhile, there are a few other recurring characters, including Doyle's children and Houdini's mother. And I guess that's all I want to say about the show.

Well, I enjoyed the show's 10-episode first season well enough. It wasn't great, but I thought the main characters had a good chemistry, and the cases were reasonably interesting. And it's always nice to see some old school feminism, even if it's painful for me to see just how much worse society's misogyny used to be than it is now. (Houdini and Doyle themselves seem to be the only men on the show who take Stratton, or any woman, seriously.) Anyway, the series was cancelled after one season, which I found only mildly disappointing.


period index