Upcoming British Detective Shows, 2015, 2016

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It's a truth universally acknowledged that if one is a British actor of mature years, it is pretty much inevitable that one will play a detective on the telly. This is the case for Martin Clunes, who is best known for playing the irascible title character in Doc Martin, and who is now, at last, taking up the magnifying glass to do a bit of investigating.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Clunes) is best-known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, but he was also quite a sleuth himself. In 1903, Anglo-Indian solicitor George Edalji was arrested and jailed for a series of brutal attacks on animals. Three years later he was released, but the taint of the crime remained. He enlisted Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who, after Kipling, was Britain's most famous author - to help clear his name. Along with his loyal secretary, Alfred Wood, Sir Arthur traipsed around the countryside, using his powers of deduction to track down the truth.

The Music of the Spheres - Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett was a master of the art of British comedy. What's more: he was one of the great fantasy novelists and satirists of the 20th Century. In being all these things, he is - at least in America - often unfairly overshadowed by specialists in each. He created a famous black-haired, bespectacled young wizard who goes to a school in a castle, and then a young upstart came along and stole his thunder. A successor to Monty Python and P.G. Wodehouse, a contemporary of Douglas Adams, he was a bit more serious than any of them. The breadth of his invention rivaled Dickens, but then, he wasn't Dickens. And of course, Pratchett was far too funny to be taken seriously as a satirist.

A Tale of Two Cities Dream Cast

A Tale of Two Cities is my favorite novel. So, even the whiff of a chance of a rumor that it may be filmed is enough to get me out dream casting. As it is, we're pretty sure that BBC4 will be adapting it soon. It's more than due, since the last TV version was in 1989, and it hasn't been on the big screen since 1958, if we don't count The Dark Knight Rises (which, given the cop-out ending, we don't). The new version is written by Alan Bleasdale, and Netflix might co-produce. There's also a feature film which has been on the shelf for ages. So who knows? Maybe we'll get two, which means there will be lots of thinkpieces from me.

To begin with some minor characters...