AllMovie

No, this weekly 60-minute Canadian drama series was not about Sherlock Holmes. Rather, The Great Detective was based on the files of a real-live crime solver named John Wilson Murray, regarded by historians as the first genuine Canadian detective, and the first to be appointed to the Ontario Department of Justice in 1875. For dramatic purposes, the central character, played by the versatile Douglas Campbell, was renamed Inspector Alistair Cameron; also, the time period was moved up to the 1890s, with Insp. Cameron solving a different mystery per week. The Great Detective was originally telecast from January 17, 1979 to March 4, 1982.