Q.E.D.

In 1982, I saw a commercial advertising the program "Q.E.D.," an upcoming new series about an adventurer scientist which took place in 1912 and was aired on the CBS network.

Not only was "Q.E.D." a great series, but it was worth staying home to catch each episode. Considering that at the time, I was a single 27 year old man who just finished nearly five years of active duty in the U.S.Navy, that says a lot about a TV program! To this day, I can't understand how or why Joanie Loves Chachi, which was aired on ABC at the same time, fared better in the ratings.

Within a year of returning to the U.S.Navy, and a tour of duty in Scotland's Holy Loch, I managed to catch "Q.E.D." on British television.

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who would gladly buy a complete box set of episodes of "Q.E.D."

I recall this running as a very limited series in my youth. It still seems magical, and in my memory the production values were spectacular. I've enjoyed a lot of the other work by the director. Interestingly enough, if you search for the tapes by their "Mastermind" title, you can sometimes find them on ebay. I hope to get a copy soon and provide a review based a on a viewing from the 21st century.

Everything I remember about it was excellent... great cast with Sam Waterston & George Innes (before he became more familiar to US audiences).... excellent scripts as only the English can do - Edwardian Sherlock Holmes/Lord Peter Wimsey/Albert Campion type mysteries, but with a Jules Verne twist. Sort of like MacGyver would have been had it been in England 80 years earlier... right at the beginning of the scientific/technological revolution of the 20th century.

I've often wondered if the creators of MacGyver saw these shows. MacGyver first aired about 3 years later.

I still have 1 episode on a much deteriorated tape.

For anyone interested in seeing QED all six episodes are available on YouTube. Not great transfers, but beggars can't be choosers.

John Hawkesworth was one of the handful of geniuses the TV medium has produced. Together with Jean Marsh and Eileen Atkins, he fashioned one of the greatest TV dramas of all time, the ORIGINAL Upstairs/Downstairs. He also created some other terrific shows: theFlame Trees of Tika, The Dutchess OF Duke StreetBy The Sword Divided, and , of course, the superb Granada Sherlock Holmes.This is one of his best, and it is now almost forgotten and totally unavailable on DVD. Like The Wild Wild West and The Adventures of Brisco County Junior, it was that rarity, a "steampunk" Fantasy/adventure drama. Hawkesworth created it as a kind of Jules Verne/H.G. Wells flavored detective show. Sam Waterson was wonderful as the brilliant, eccentric, unlikable, "scientific detective" Quentin Edward Deverill, an American expatriate living in late Edwardian/Early Georgian England. Another influence on the show, which apparently no-one has mentioned, were the wonderful "Thinking Machine detective stories of Jacques Futrelle, with their brilliant, arrogant hero, Professor S.F.X Van Dusen. It sis truly sad that this series only lasted six episodes, and we never got to see him battle German spies during World War One.