Orphaned Episodes: The Murder on the Bluebell Line (QED)
The introduction to this series of posts can be found here . QED was a long running series of popular science documentaries made by the BBC (as so often on this blog the majority of shows in this series of posts have been made by independent television). Murder on the Bluebell Line is a dramatisation of the Piltdown Man hoax, so although it looks and sounds confusingly like a murder mystery it is well within QED's remit of popular scientific documentary. It takes the form of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson doing a live investigation of the evidence: the reason they are used is that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was suspected to have been involved in the deception; as Watson rightly says, if Doyle would make that up even Holmes and Watson could be fictional! As a documentary it proves remarkably revealing: not least because of the clever juxtaposition of fiction and reality, but in its revelations of human attitude. Having read round a bit for this and having watched the show a ...