I saw a tweet the other day in response to a piece about the new Dear Holmes series. It said:

“Did you get permission from the creators of Sherlock to do this?”

Sigh.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Sherlock. I love Benedict Cumberbatch, adore Steven Moffat and can’t get enough Mark Gatiss, but even they would be miffed at the suggestion that they created Sherlock… Holmes, that is. The thing is, if you came to the Great Detective through the BBC series, you arrived late. Very late.

You see, there’s a difference between Sherlock, the BBC series which is set in 21st Century London, and Sherlock Holmes, the detective who was created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and who (mostly) prowls the streets of Victorian London–when he’s not prowling Dartmoor or Cornwall or any number of other places in the sixty tales written by the good…