THREE-PART SERIES PREMIERES SUNDAY, DEC. 8 at 7:00PM

Popular British historian and television host Lucy Worsley returns to PBS this week to explore why author Arthur Conan Doyle came to despise the character that made him rich and famous. In LUCY WORSLEY'S HOLMES VS. DOYLE, Worsley explores the parallel lives of Doyle and Holmes in the historical context of their times. From the dying years of Victorian England, through the imperial crisis of the Boer war, the optimism of the early Edwardian years, to the trauma of the First World War, Arthur and Sherlock lived through them all.

Featured in over 60 original stories and countless film and television adaptions, Sherlock Holmes has intrigued and excited fans with his intellect and powers of deduction for more than a century. Over the course of three episodes, Worsley investigates the curious relationship between detective and author.

In Episode 1, “Doctor and Detective” (December 8), Lucy unearths Holmes’ origins in Doyle’s early life as a medical student in Edinburgh. She unpacks the early stories, revealing the dark underbelly of late Victorian Britain, from drug use to true crime. She explores how Doyle infused his stories with cutting-edge technological developments and traces the author’s growing disenchantment with his detective, heading to Switzerland to visit the site of one of the most famous deaths in literature.