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.

Q.E.D. was a brilliant TV series and it truly was one of the very few worth scheduling for! I suspect that in this era of TIVO and recording devices that it would fare much better than it did in 1982. I am eagerly awaiting its availability on DVD!While it is true that it has some in common with other television shows like The Wild, Wild West, The Bearcats and The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., all of which I am a huge fan of,Q.E.D. had a much more intellectual quality to it. It did not suffer for that, however - the dialog was witty and the action was high. The show ran in the UK as Mastermind, and it did have something of the BBC feel to it, but with better production values than BBC typically had in that era.I was a nineteen year old lad when this series ran initially, and had much too much to do in my life to make time for television. I remember my dear mother, however, calling me to remind me that Q.E.D. was on, and we would sit on the phone and watch it together. Wonderful memories.Truly, Q.E.D. is a sad loss and, if it could be done with the same quality and values today, I would love to see it make a return.

This was one of those wonderful rare moments in T.V. that I wished I'd captured forever on VHS. Won't it ever air again? It was so creative and I remember it was aired once a week and the wait for the next episode was excruciating. I want to see it all again. I want to buy it. I want what I can't have. Not even on EBAY. So, having ranted enough it was, by far, one of the best series the 80's put out. It should be considered a classic but is lost in space. At least this website and Wikipedia mention it. Sob.It was utterly appealing, funny, flirtatious, and original. Maybe not like Sherlock Holmes original, I actually think Quintin is far more attractive and has a better chance with his leading lady than the stiff and chalky Holmes ever could.

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."