ABSTRACT
This chapter interrogates character identity in the two most recent Holmes television adaptations, Sherlock and Elementary. It uses discursive evidence from critical reviews, blogs, and Reddit discussion threads concerning the characterization of the Cumberbatch-Holmes (C-H) and the Miller-Holmes (M-H) to determine whether audiences judge the C-H and M-H as persuasive representations of the Great Detective and to identify the criteria involved in this evaluation. It speaks more widely to the question of audience acceptance or rejection of the rebooting, retconning, and general reconfiguring of iconic popular figures that occurs as producers seek either to extend their copyrighted characters' profitable lives across multiple decades and media or to further exploit characters in the public domain. The chapter hypothesizes that the hive mind has greater authority than narratologists to evaluate the consistency of new incarnations of fictional characters with canon and/or the transfiction as whole.
