Houdini & Doyle – Bedlam

• Title: Houdini & Doyle – Bedlam
• IMDb: link

An attack on a priest by a recently-released mental patient believing she may have been possessed and a man at the center of an exorcism left as a vegetable leads Arthur Conan Doyle (Stephen Mangan), Harry Houdini (Michael Weston), and Constable Adelaide Stratton (Rebecca Liddiard) to Bethlem Hospital in search of answers. While investigating the case, Doyle stumbles on the doctor’s secret concerning his father’s death at the hospital which gets him locked away in the asylum with a patient (Ewen Bremner) who believes he is Sherlock Holmes.

The twist comes when Doyle realizes he’s not in the asylum but he’s been exposed to the same hallucinatory drug which eventually led to the deaths of several of the other victims. With Doyle stuck in a prison of his own mind it falls on Houdini and Adelaide to discover why anyone would poison former inmates for the sake of science. Aside from nearly killing him, Doyle’s hallicinations do allow him to come to peace with his father (Risteard Cooper) and eventually break the drug’s power over him. The episode’s B-story involves Adelaide slowly opening up to Houdini about her husband’s death. We also learn someone doesn’t want Adelaide to continue her investigation and may take deadly steps to stop her from learning the truth.