The Rivals: Tales of Sherlock Holmes’ rival detectives

Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard was made to look a fool in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Now he gets his own back, introducing sixteen tales of detectives whose abilities rival that of the great Sherlock Holmes.

Starring James Fleet (Series 1, 3 and 4) and Tim Piggott-Smith (Series 2) as Lestrade, with casts featuring Andrew Scott, Paul Rhys, Anton Lesser, Honeysuckle Weeks, Rupert Vansittart, John Sessions, Marcia Warren and Tim McInnerny.

Dramatised for radio by Chris Harrald, these stories are written by masters of the crime and thriller genre, all contemporaries of Arthur Conan Doyle.

They include:
The Murders on the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe
The Problem of Cell 13 by Jacques Futrelle
Murder By Proxy by Matthias McDonnel Bodkin
The Mystery of Redstone Manor by Catherine Louisa Pirkis
The Problem of the Superfluous Finger by Jacques Futrelle
The Clue of the Silver Spoons by Robert Barr
The Intangible Clue by Anna Katharine Green
The Game Played in the Dark by Ernest Bramah
The Kinght's Cross Signal Problem by Ernest Bramah
A Snapshot by Matthias McDonnel Bodkin
Seven, Seven, Seven - City by Julius Chambers
The Moabite Cipher - by R Austin Freeman
The Clairvoyants - by Arthur B Reeve
The Stanway Cameo Mystery - Arthur Morrison
The Secret of Dunstan's Tower - Ernest Bramah
The Mystery of the Scarlet Thread - Jacques Futrelle

Directed by Sasha Yevtushenko (Series 1) and Liz Webb (Series 2, 3, 4)

(c) BBC Studios Distribution Ltd 2021
(p) BBC Studios Distribution Ltd 2021