I don't know why this story is such a 'classic'....(SPOILER S)

Try reading the book and you'll understand why it's such a classic. The film adaptation changes the plot a great deal (e.g., the scene you describe as being "clever, strategy-wise" is not in the book).

In the book, Hartright and Marian are the detectives who piece everything together. They use espionage (Marian scaling the veranda to eavesdrop on Fosco and Percival), interrogation (Hartright's masterful use of logical leaps and manipulation in his interrogation with Mrs. Catherick), tailing (Hartright following Fosco to arrange the 'meeting' with Pesca), information hunting (Hartright gathering the intelligence which leads to the truth of Anne's parentage and Percival's secret) and the final confrontation where Hartright employs a 'dead man's switch' in his showdown with Fosco.

I think Hartright rightly surmises events at the end of the book when he talks about how their poverty was the vehicle for success since they would never have been forced to conduct the investigation themselves if they'd had enough money to utilise the law.

I'm the opposite to the OP, read the book, but not seen the TV show, but the synopsis sounds entirely different.

"The Woman in White" is widely considered to be one of the first and best "sensation" novels - That in and of itself guaranteed this novel to be and to remain a novel of classic literature.

"Nowadays, people tend to know Collins, if they know him at all, for either “The Woman in White,” published in 1860, or “The Moonstone,” published in 1868. Since the former is considered the originator of the “sensation novel”—a wildly popular Victorian genre that blended gothic horror and domestic realism—and the latter is often credited with spawning the modern detective story, that’s not a bad legacy." Excerpt from the July 25, 2011 issue of The New Yorker review of Wilkie Collins's work entitled "DOUBLES: Wilkie Collins’s shadow selves" by Jonathan Rosen.

Link to the review: https://www.google.com/amp/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/07/25/doubles/amp?client=safari

I remember reading both of those novels as a child and being unable to put them down. Perhaps knowing the significance of "The Woman in White" (explained in the footnotes of the edition I read at the time) would make a difference in the way someone viewed the film. Yes, the novels are tame and simply-plotted for adults of today, but knowing their history, at least to some, while they are a quick read, are still fun. The film version of "The Woman in White" (1997) is too, in my opinion. I've not yet seen any version of "The Moonstone."


"...question is why you won't come with me." "I don't have a passport." "What are you, American?"