The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes was a 1971-1973 British television series about London by Gaslight detectives from both the Victorian and Edwardian Ages.
The program featured mystery stories and charismatic detectives written and created by contemporaries of Arthur Conan Doyle. For more click HERE.
Episode: FIVE HUNDRED CARATS (February 5th, 1973)
Detective: Inspector Leo Lipinzki of Kimberley, South Africa, a figure created by American author George Griffith. The first Inspector Lipinzki story was published in 1893.
Synopsis: We are now in the second and final season of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. In addition to his many “ancient” science fiction stories – reviewed previously here at Balladeer’s Blog – George Griffith also wrote the eight Inspector Lipinzki stories, which were later collected in the book Knaves of Diamonds in 1899.
For the first time in this series we have a story set outside Great Britain, which I found to be a welcome change of pace. Leo Lipinzki (Barry Keegan) works as a Detective Inspector for the Cape Police, but technically the already wealthy and powerful De Beers Diamond Corporation is who he really answers to.
Virtually all the murders, thefts and other crimes that Lipinzki investigates stem from IDB – Illicit Diamond Buying – amid the busy diamond mines and other establishments of South Africa. (And if you read the Inspector Lipinzki stories you’ll see that the acronym “IDB” is used ad nauseum.)
The episode Five Hundred Carats opens up with a murder that we eventually learn ties into the brilliant, seemingly impossible theft of the Great De Beers Diamond. Though in the original story George Griffith presented it as if the Inspector himself was relating the case to him, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes substitutes the fictional “Mr. Cornelius” (Alan Tilvern), an American diamond buyer, for Griffith. Continue reading
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