Think of any good mysteries that Mystery! hasn't done? One I think they should do is Arthur Garrett's Lord Darcy. BTW, when making suggestions, keep in mind that it seems that Mystery! limits itself to Britain based stuff, so someone like Nero Wolfe would be unlikely (and I doubt they could find an actor fat enough to play him).

William Conrad played Wolfe in a short lived series in the 80's. Lee Horsely was Archie Goodwin.

As much as I like Lord Darcy, I think the magical elements would keep it from being a Mystery! presentation.

Also didn't Mystery! run the Maigret series, which is about a French policeman?

Off hand I can think of two book-turned-TV series which Mystery!, apparently, chose not to run. (Only so many broadcast hours in a year, I guess.) The Ruth Rendell Mysteries and the Dick Francis Mysteries.

I would like to see a true-to-the-original version of Father Brown. Previous TV versions, while entertaining, never really lived up to the original stories.
Also I would be interested in seeing t-t-t-o adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe's M. August Dupin stories, the first mystery stories, & some think a big inspiration for Holmes.
(I don't there have been Mystery! quality productions of these, yet.)

Mystery! did show a series of stories featuring Sid Halley, a Dick Francis character. These were under the series title "The Racing Game". I'm guessing though that the series you mention Keith,is a different one. Can you tell us a little about it?

Don't know a lot about it. It ran for a while on my local PBS station and was called the Dick Francis Mysteries and was based on his books. It never aired in a time slot when I could watch it.

Why's that, Keith? Would it be beyond the budget, or are the Mystery! producers just a bunch of stodges?

Is this about my Lord Darcy comment or something else?

Assuming it's Darcy, it just seems to me that Mystery! has tended to focus on the more realistic, or down to Earth, mystery stories, and that stories involving real magic, or real vampires, or science fiction mysteries, would be outside of what they usually present.
I could be wrong, but that's what it looks like from the episodes I've seen.

Lew Archer - one reason this character has never really translated well to the screen is because Ross MacDonald's first-person writing style, prose and observations give us insights that a non-literary medium can't afford as well. Paul Newman changed the name of the character to "Harper" and played him in a couple of films. Harper, the first of these, got all the critical acclaim; but it is really the lesser known sequel, The Drowning Pool, which is the more excellent of the two films. There was also a short-lived TV series starring Brian Keith in the early seventies. If you're interested in reading MacDonald's Archer books, The Far Side of the Dollar is my choice as his best novel. The Chill is not far behind. The Name is Archer is a collection of short stories and is also excellent, these would all make excellent television episodes. Whatever MacDonald you decide to read, be sure to keep a pen and a scorecard handy, you'll need it to keep track of all the characters and their relationships to each other.

It's nice to know that there are others out there who appreciate Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy. I do so wish he could have written more before he passed away. Someone--can't think of the name offhand--wrote two sequels that were fairly good, although he took some liberties that I didn't care for. I think a Lord Darcy series would be wonderful. Costuming, etc, would be pretty much like they used for the Sherlock Holmes series. As far as special effects go, considering how advanced they are nowadays, I wouldn't think that the cost would be prohibitive.

Another suggestion would be adapting some of Elizabeth Peter's mysteries. She has three recurring characters among her books--Amelia Peabody Emerson, Victorian archeologist, Dr. Victoria Bliss, contemporary art historian, and Jacqueline Kirby, librarian-turned-bestselling author. They would be a lot of fun.

I'd like them to rerun the Sid Halley mysteries. I missed them.

It might be fun if Catherine Aird's C.D. Sloan could be translated to the screen. I'm not inclined to think it would work well, though; a great deal of his appeal lies in his internal monologue during his conversations with others (impossible to do in real time) and without them his cases could easily come across as Inspector Morse-ish.

There were three Dick Francis mysteries created for television that weren't related to The Racing Game. They were Twice Shy, Blood Sport and In The Frame. They a took the character David Cleveland from Slay-ride and made him the protagonist. The stories were only loosely based on the the books they they were taken from. There was also a movie based on Dick Francis's first novel Dead Cert, but I can't find it anywhere. There originally going to be 13 episodes of The Racing Game, but only 6 were made.

I'd like to see them do some more non-Poirot, non-Miss Marple Agatha Christie stuff, like And Then There Were None and The Pale Horse.

I enjoyed the Dr. Bell and Conan Doyle adventure, but am I the only one who thought the fellow playing Dr. Bell looked like Bob Uecker?

That guy that looks like Bob Uecker is Ian Richardson, who earlier in his career did in fact play Sherlock Holmes. Word is that they're going to produce four more episodes of Murder Rooms. Hope that they'll have Neill, since I think Alec Newman did a really great job.

Also wish they could have done more Heat of the Sun.

Hey, Moderator - any chance we could add the new A&E Nero Wolfe to this board?

I know it's not strictly a 'Mystery!' series, but going by the traffic on the www.aande.com discussion board I can certify that Wolfe fans are numerous, loyal - and nitpickers of the highest order!

No, this board is for the PBS anthology show Mystery! However, if you look under the discussion Reinventing Mystery!, there are plans to add in some American stuff to the show's lineup. The article that's linked to, however, indicates that they'll be going for minority detectives, and you don't get much more unminority than fat white guys. They still may do Nero Wolfe since he's a classic (maybe played by Ian McNiece?).