US fans - Sherlock Tonight

[Neroon]

Don't forget that technically "Sherlock" is a title and not a name. Granted, it's far and away most closely associated with the character of "Sherlock Holmes", but the term by itself could allude to it being about a different detective or at least not necessarily Doyle's famous one.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Don't forget that technically "Sherlock" is a title and not a name.

Says who? I've never heard that before, and it seems that Google hadn't either, until you made that post anyway!

 

[Christopher]

Don't forget that technically "Sherlock" is a title and not a name. Granted, it's far and away most closely associated with the character of "Sherlock Holmes", but the term by itself could allude to it being about a different detective or at least not necessarily Doyle's famous one.

Where in the world did you get that idea?? Sherlock is an Old English given name meaning "short-haired" (sheared locks), or "fair-haired" according to some etymologies. It is the character's given name, just as Mycroft is his brother's given name and John is his partner's given name. These days it's far more common as a surname than a given name (for instance, IMDb lists over 70 people with the last name Sherlock and only one with it as a first name), but it's never been a title. Indeed, in narrating the stories, Watson often refers to him as "Mr. Sherlock Holmes." His only title is Mister. And Mycroft addresses him as Sherlock; he'd hardly address his own brother by a title.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Maybe he somehow got the name Sherlock mixed up with the word "shylock"? Even so, it still wouldn't fit, since Mr. Holmes was certainly never a shylock.

 

[OmahaStar]

Off to TVM......

Why? I put it in the DW forum because of the DW ties.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Their goal was to strip away the distracting period elements and focus on the real core of Doyle's creation, namely the characters of Holmes and Watson and their relationship. Great characters are timeless.

That may be so, but I think some of us find the modernism equally distracting. I think what worked with the wartime shift was that it wasn't so far into the future as to be distracting and felt like they were still within the realm of believability. Afterall, Holmes would of been in his old age and at his cottage by the time WWI had started, so it doesn't feel out of place to think of him as being in the WWII era.

And I think Sherlock had the sheer luck of being named Sherlock

 

[Christopher]

Maybe he somehow got the name Sherlock mixed up with the word "shylock"? Even so, it still wouldn't fit, since Mr. Holmes was certainly never a shylock.

Hmm, possibly. Although "shylock" isn't so much a title for a moneylender/usurer as a derogatory nickname, a reference to Shylock from The Merchant of Venice.

That may be so, but I think some of us find the modernism equally distracting. I think what worked with the wartime shift was that it wasn't so far into the future as to be distracting and felt like they were still within the realm of believability. Afterall, Holmes would of been in his old age and at his cottage by the time WWI had started, so it doesn't feel out of place to think of him as being in the WWII era.

Superman and Batman started out in the '30s, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four in the '60s. James Bond first appeared in print in 1953, on film in 1962. But their stories have been updated over and over, keeping them "modern," keeping their characters the same as the world has changed around them. It's been more gradual, less of an abrupt change, but it's the same principle. And then there are all the modern remakes of characters like the Green Hornet or Flash Gordon or the Phantom (though in that case there's a built-in justification for progressing it through the generations).

If anything, I find it surprising that Holmes and Watson haven't been modernized more often. There have been several adaptations that brought the original Victorian Holmes into the present or future through cryogenics, time warps, or the like, but the very commonplace practice of simply doing a new version of an old character that happens to be set in the present has rarely been applied in this case, and that surprises me -- not out of any personal preference, but simply from the standpoint of an observer of cultural patterns. It's been done with so many other characters, so it's odd that it hasn't been done much with Holmes.

 

[bigdaddy]

I keep missing the first part of the first movie...I mean episode, but I love it.

I rather think of them as movies, that is how PBS is playing them as anyways.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Maybe he somehow got the name Sherlock mixed up with the word "shylock"? Even so, it still wouldn't fit, since Mr. Holmes was certainly never a shylock.

Hmm, possibly. Although "shylock" isn't so much a title for a moneylender/usurer as a derogatory nickname, a reference to Shylock from The Merchant of Venice.

That may be so, but I think some of us find the modernism equally distracting. I think what worked with the wartime shift was that it wasn't so far into the future as to be distracting and felt like they were still within the realm of believability. Afterall, Holmes would of been in his old age and at his cottage by the time WWI had started, so it doesn't feel out of place to think of him as being in the WWII era.

Superman and Batman started out in the '30s, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four in the '60s. James Bond first appeared in print in 1953, on film in 1962. But their stories have been updated over and over, keeping them "modern," keeping their characters the same as the world has changed around them. It's been more gradual, less of an abrupt change, but it's the same principle. And then there are all the modern remakes of characters like the Green Hornet or Flash Gordon or the Phantom (though in that case there's a built-in justification for progressing it through the generations).

If anything, I find it surprising that Holmes and Watson haven't been modernized more often. There have been several adaptations that brought the original Victorian Holmes into the present or future through cryogenics, time warps, or the like, but the very commonplace practice of simply doing a new version of an old character that happens to be set in the present has rarely been applied in this case, and that surprises me -- not out of any personal preference, but simply from the standpoint of an observer of cultural patterns. It's been done with so many other characters, so it's odd that it hasn't been done much with Holmes.

Hmmm, interesting thoughts. I've actually never looked at it that way. If only the serials would have continued, then maybe we would have seen a progression like you talk about. And it could be that Sherlock Holmes is thought of not only as a cultural icon, but as a historical icon as well, hence the reluctance on updating,. As far as I know, there haven't been any Sherlock Holmes comic books, have there? I'd imagine the serials, if they had continued would have eventually become comic books. Anyway, I just personally find the modernism to be distracting. I find some parts of it brilliant, like the way they've integrated certain information systems like the cell phone into showing what he's thinking about, and the fact that Watson posts his stories on a blog, and at other times I find the modernism, be it locations or situations or even objects, tend to clash with the ideology.

 

[propita]

The only bad thing about no Victorianism in this version is that there’s no steampunk stuff. Other than that, I’m lovin’ it!

 

[RJDiogenes]

It's not Sherlock Holmes, though, so anybody expecting that is likely to be disappointed. They should have just given the characters original names; the use of familiar names was more distracting than anything else.

Huh? Come on, these characters were very much Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Their personalities and relationship were very closely based on the way Conan Doyle originally wrote them; the only difference is that this show places those personalities in the modern world and adapts them to it. Also, the plot was a loose adaptation of A Study in Scarlet, the novel that introduced Holmes and Watson. It's the same characters, the same series premise, just in a different setting. Changing the names would make no sense.

Changing the names would make perfect sense, just as it has with every other Holmes pastiche from House to Psych. These characters may be derived from the originals, but here we have a main character who is a will-he-or-won't-he-kill-just-out-of-boredom sociopath and a physician sidekick so twisted by war that he gets the jitters without it (and has no problem with cold-bloodedly executing people). So, no, these are not the original characters.

And the attitude that Sherlock Holmes has to be stuck in the Victorian Era to be true to the character is exactly what Moffat and Gatiss sought to challenge by doing this show. Their goal was to strip away the distracting period elements and focus on the real core of Doyle's creation, namely the characters of Holmes and Watson and their relationship. Great characters are timeless.

I do think some characters belong in certain times and places-- certainly they don't belong in certain times and places. Would you reimagine Flash Gordon in the Pleistocene, Odysseus in Hoboken, the Scarlet Pimpernel in the Roaring 20s or the Lone Ranger in Boston? Some characters have wider ranges; James Bond is a spy, so there are a good many decades he would be at home in.

And it's not the first time Holmes has been modernized. When Universal Studios began making Holmes movies in the '40s, it was in the era when all US movies were under pressure to be wartime propaganda, so they updated Holmes to what was then the present day and had him take on Nazis (even though stars Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce had already done two Fox movies and a radio series set in Victorian times). And after the war ended, they still kept Holmes and Watson in the present for the rest of the film series.

That was unfortunate, but the movies did a good job of holding on to the Holmes ambiance. Of course, they were less than fifty years removed from Holmes's time, not over a hundred as we are now; and the years since WWII have been infinitely more eventful, culturally speaking, than the first part of the century.

 

[Christopher]

As far as I know, there haven't been any Sherlock Holmes comic books, have there?

If you'd asked me that two months ago, I wouldn't have known the answer, but:

http://goodcomics.comicbookresource...assic-comics-corner-a-study-in-sherlock-pt-1/

http://goodcomics.comicbookresource...assic-comics-corner-a-study-in-sherlock-pt-2/

...and at other times I find the modernism, be it locations or situations or even objects, tend to clash with the ideology.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by that? The only clash I see is that it's harder to justify the idea of Holmes as something special than it was in the Victorian age, because now the forensic science that Holmes (and Doyle) pioneered has become a universal police practice.

Changing the names would make perfect sense, just as it has with every other Holmes pastiche from House to Psych.

That's not the same thing, any more than West Side Story is the same thing as Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. This isn't just a pastiche, it is Sherlock Holmes. Same characters, just a different era.

These characters may be derived from the originals, but here we have a main character who is a will-he-or-won't-he-kill-just-out-of-boredom sociopath...

No, we don't. We have a main character who is alleged to be a potential killer by someone who dislikes him. You can't take every sentence uttered by every character as gospel fact. It was just one woman's opinion. And you're getting it wrong -- she accused him of being a psychopath, and Holmes later corrected her that he's actually a high-functioning sociopath, which is a rather different thing. So not only was it just her opinion, but it was a misinformed opinion.

and a physician sidekick so twisted by war that he gets the jitters without it (and has no problem with cold-bloodedly executing people).

On the former point, both Watsons are veterans of war in Afghanistan and both sustained wounds there. It's just that a modern treatment of the character is bound to be more psychologically nuanced. Had Moffat written a Victorian-era John Watson, he probably would've written him the same way.

On the second point, Doyle's Watson was explicitly described as a crack shot, a superb marksman. He often made use of his service revolver in their cases, and was surely just as stoic about it afterward, because he was a trained soldier.

These are the same characters, at least as much as Bruce Timm's Batman and Christopher Nolan's Batman are the same character. The fact that there are differences in interpretation doesn't make them different characters, just different spins on the same characters.

I do think some characters belong in certain times and places-- certainly they don't belong in certain times and places. Would you reimagine Flash Gordon in the Pleistocene, Odysseus in Hoboken, the Scarlet Pimpernel in the Roaring 20s or the Lone Ranger in Boston?

Flash Gordon quickly leaves the place of his origin for an exotic alien world, so he could come from any Industrial-Age time period. And indeed Flash Gordon has been updated as a "present-day" character more than once -- in the 1980 movie, 1986's Defenders of the Earth, the 1996 animated series, the 2007 live-action series, and, I believe, in various comics as well. And the 1950s TV series put Flash, Dale, and Zarkov in the 33rd century.

As for Odysseus, he's just a guy trying to get home to his wife. That tale could easily be told as, say, an epic space opera or a Western. As for the Scarlet Pimpernel, that could be done in any bloody revolution, perhaps a post-apocalyptic updating or something in the Russian Revolution. The Lone Ranger could maybe work in a futuristic frontier setting. (In my initial version of the post, I mentioned Zorro and Batman as updatings of the Pimpernel and the Green Hornet as both a conceptual and biological descendant of the Lone Ranger, but those count as similar characters, not updatings of the same characters.)

Some characters have wider ranges; James Bond is a spy, so there are a good many decades he would be at home in.

And Holmes is the world's greatest detective, an antisocial genius and a drug addict. There's nothing about who he is that requires him to be in the Victorian Era. (Yes, as I said, his forensics skills aren't as unique in a later era, but that can be worked around.)

That was unfortunate, but the movies did a good job of holding on to the Holmes ambiance. Of course, they were less than fifty years removed from Holmes's time, not over a hundred as we are now; and the years since WWII have been infinitely more eventful, culturally speaking, than the first part of the century.

Easy to say that in retrospect. We always assume less stuff happened in the past because a lot of it doesn't get written down or remembered. But keep in mind that the people who lived in the '40s considered their era every bit as modern as we consider ours, and no doubt saw great social and cultural foment in the preceding decades. Everyone thinks their own time is special and that all the past is kind of blended together.

 

[propita]

Another example of different settings for the same story? "High Noon" and "Outland," with Sean Connery in the Gary Cooper role. Though one could easily argue that nearly any movie where a lone and nearly unsupported good guy goes up against a group of bad guys would count, "Outland" is far closer in the general characterization and plot, minus the Western, of course. Not too many horses on a space station.

 

[Owain Taggart]

As far as I know, there haven't been any Sherlock Holmes comic books, have there?

If you'd asked me that two months ago, I wouldn't have known the answer, but:

http://goodcomics.comicbookresource...assic-comics-corner-a-study-in-sherlock-pt-1/

http://goodcomics.comicbookresource...assic-comics-corner-a-study-in-sherlock-pt-2/

Fascinating. I'll have to take a closer look at it soon. Thanks for the links.

...and at other times I find the modernism, be it locations or situations or even objects, tend to clash with the ideology.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by that? The only clash I see is that it's harder to justify the idea of Holmes as something special than it was in the Victorian age, because now the forensic science that Holmes (and Doyle) pioneered has become a universal police practice.

That's certainly a large part of it. It's an odd feeling seeing Holmes in a time and place where CSI styles of investigation are commonplace. Therefore, it feels a bit like he's diminutive in his own world. He still has the skill, but all that seems rather inconsequential. Instead of an intellectual superman, he just seems like another detective who happens to be really good at solving crimes. I hope that makes sense. Thanks for taking the time to understand where I'm coming from, Christopher.

Don't get me wrong, I still really like what I've seen, and I'll be checking out the others as they come out. They've certainly made a good effort, but I just feel some of the things don't work quite as well.

Oh, here's another example of different settings for the same story. We've had many versions of War of the Worlds. The Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise movie transplanted it in modern times, and even before that, the successful 1953 movie did it too. Despite the 1953 movie being set in modern times, it still managed to evoke the atmosphere and stay fairly close to the book. The Spielberg movie I felt missed the mark completely. Hated that movie. A few years ago, I picked up an independent release of War of the Worlds that was word for word like the book right down to it being set in the 19th century, same as the novel. It's fairly bad in terms of production, but it still gets my respect for having the guts to release what is essentially a movie adaptation of the book.

 

[Agent Richard07]

I think of the modern Holmes as a pioneer. He's got sharp mental skills that most people of this era have yet to develop. How many people today can size up a person or situation, or run thorugh a shortcut the way he did? You could say that he's on the cutting edge of mind science just like Dr. House or Patrick Jane.

 

[stj]

Any Sherlock Holmes adaptation succeeds only as well as its Watson. This Watson is moralistic about his sister's drinking; stiff necked and prickly with everyone but Sherlock; self-isolated; deeply neurotic; obsessed with thrills, and murderous. About the only character trait he has in common with the literary original is a genuine admiration for Sherlock Holmes. The real Dr. Watson does so with an honest appreciation that overlooks personal vanity. Why this guy doesn't equally admire Mycroft is a mystery revealed only by the backstory notes in the script. Nothing will solve the mystery of how someone could seriously claim this Dr. Watson is merely a modernized version.

It is obvious why the perps felt it was necessary to have an orgin story for the Holmes/Watson duo, inasmuch as this Dr. Watson isn't the kind of man who would put up with a Sherlock because Sherlock is a hero and good people support heroes. That said, having Sherlock trick the ninny into running without his cane isn't the way to go in my opinion. It's far too psychologically crude, not to say, downright ignorant. (The show's allegedly smart characters misuse "psychosomatic" and "sociopath" too!) The gay jokes about Holmes and Watson are intended to cover up the truly perverted nature of Watson's attachment.

Having the villain literally come to Sherlock's door, just to harbinge Moriarty is pretty lame. The villain blurting out Moriarty's name under torture is merely repulsive, having no shred of believability. That villain was not the kind to forego the pleasure of leaving Holmes menaced by an unknown threat.

Watson's shot with a handgun at that range is preposterous. Handguns just aren't that accurate.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Why is it only 3 episodes a season?

Because it's British and the British are kinda wierd that way. Why are all of their mystery shows 90 minutes long, as opposed to most American crime dramas, which are only an hour long?

The good news about Sherlock is that the characters are so interesting that they're able to hold my undivided attention for 90 minutes. Most of the other British mysteries on Masterpiece Mystery aren't able to do that. I like Inspector Lewis well enough but I usually find myself distracted by a sudoku puzzle while I'm watching it. Just about any of the other mysteries--like Foyle's War, Miss Marple, Poirot, & Wallander--stretch out way too long. They could benefit from being at least a half-hour shorter.

It's not Sherlock Holmes, though, so anybody expecting that is likely to be disappointed.

I thoroughly disagree. As someone who is a big fan of the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories, I found this to be one of the most faithful adaptations I've ever seen in terms of nailing the spirit of the characters. (Between this series & last year's Guy Ritchie film, it's nice to see that modern adaptations are going back to the source material instead of being bogged down in the historical bastardizations of the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce movies.)

I really enjoyed a lot of the small touches they carried over from the original stories. A few examples:
- "Rache" written at the crime scene. (However, the context was very different. In A Study in Scarlet, the killer wrote "Rache" at the crime scene as a deliberate red herring to lead the police to believe that the victims were murdered as part of a German communist revenge plot.)
- Sherlock Holmes beating a cadaver to determine how long you can cause bruising after death.
- Determining alcoholism by noticing the scratch marks on the cell phone's charger port (rather than the hole for a key to wind the watch).

If anything, I find it surprising that Holmes and Watson haven't been modernized more often. There have been several adaptations that brought the original Victorian Holmes into the present or future through cryogenics, time warps, or the like, but the very commonplace practice of simply doing a new version of an old character that happens to be set in the present has rarely been applied in this case, and that surprises me -- not out of any personal preference, but simply from the standpoint of an observer of cultural patterns. It's been done with so many other characters, so it's odd that it hasn't been done much with Holmes.

Yeah, especially since it's not like Sherlock Holmes was originally conceived as a period character. The original stories are set in the Victorian era because that was the present day when ACD first wrote them.

As far as I know, there haven't been any Sherlock Holmes comic books, have there?

Last time I looked, Barnes & Noble had some graphic novel adaptations of some of ACD's novels-- A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, Hound of the Baskervilles.

 

[Neroon]

Don't forget that technically "Sherlock" is a title and not a name.

Says who? I've never heard that before, and it seems that Google hadn't either, until you made that post anyway!

Don't forget that technically "Sherlock" is a title and not a name. Granted, it's far and away most closely associated with the character of "Sherlock Holmes", but the term by itself could allude to it being about a different detective or at least not necessarily Doyle's famous one.

Where in the world did you get that idea?? Sherlock is an Old English given name meaning "short-haired" (sheared locks), or "fair-haired" according to some etymologies. It is the character's given name, just as Mycroft is his brother's given name and John is his partner's given name. These days it's far more common as a surname than a given name (for instance, IMDb lists over 70 people with the last name Sherlock and only one with it as a first name), but it's never been a title. Indeed, in narrating the stories, Watson often refers to him as "Mr. Sherlock Holmes." His only title is Mister. And Mycroft addresses him as Sherlock; he'd hardly address his own brother by a title.

From here:
source 1
and
source 2
and
source 3
and
source 4

I freely recognize that it's used as a first name, but I simply wanted to point out the origins of the name are as a title or job. Perhaps that was how Doyle came to call his character that, "Sherlock Holmes".

Off to TVM......

Why? I put it in the DW forum because of the DW ties.

The subject is first and foremost the TV series "Sherlock". Secondly, that show is not really Doctor Who, nor even SFF-related. Actors who were up for the part of the Doctor are a tenuous connection at best.

If anyone wishes to discuss this further, we can do so over PM lest we distract the thread from its focus.

 

[Christopher]

That's certainly a large part of it. It's an odd feeling seeing Holmes in a time and place where CSI styles of investigation are commonplace. Therefore, it feels a bit like he's diminutive in his own world. He still has the skill, but all that seems rather inconsequential. Instead of an intellectual superman, he just seems like another detective who happens to be really good at solving crimes.

True; he's not so much The Great Detective here. But that's not really a change in Holmes, it's a change in the police. They're in less need of his services for routine matters and less happy with turning to him when they do need to.

But that just means that the emphasis is shifted to focus more on Holmes and Watson as characters. They're still the same people at the core that they were in Conan Doyle's version, but they exist in a different context and are perceived differently by the world around them -- a world where we have a lot more knowledge and experience of psychology and so can recognize (or at least believe we recognize) things like sociopathy and post-traumatic stress that would've gone unacknowledged in the Victorian era.

That's what Moffat and Gatiss are doing. The characters are the same, but their world is changed and that change affects and alters the characters in turn. That's the whole point of what they're exploring by doing this series. What do Holmes and Watson become when they're born and raised in our world?

Oh, here's another example of different settings for the same story. We've had many versions of War of the Worlds. The Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise movie transplanted it in modern times, and even before that, the successful 1953 movie did it too. Despite the 1953 movie being set in modern times, it still managed to evoke the atmosphere and stay fairly close to the book. The Spielberg movie I felt missed the mark completely. Hated that movie. A few years ago, I picked up an independent release of War of the Worlds that was word for word like the book right down to it being set in the 19th century, same as the novel. It's fairly bad in terms of production, but it still gets my respect for having the guts to release what is essentially a movie adaptation of the book.

The difference there is that it's not the same characters, since the book doesn't really have an identifiable protagonist, just a nameless narrator. So the Mercury Radio Theater version was a fake news broadcast in the first half and followed a newly created scientist character as the narrator for the second half; the '53 movie gave us Dr. Clayton Forrester and Sylvia Van Buren; and the Spielberg movie focused on some family. (The '53 movie had so little in common with the book, in fact, that War of the Worlds: The Series, presented as a direct sequel to the '53 movie, was able to treat Wells's novel as a work of fiction that actually existed within the show's universe.)

I think of the modern Holmes as a pioneer. He's got sharp mental skills that most people of this era have yet to develop. How many people today can size up a person or situation, or run thorugh a shortcut the way he did? You could say that he's on the cutting edge of mind science just like Dr. House or Patrick Jane.

Or you could say that he retains habits of critical thinking, memory, and observation that too many of us have lost as we've become more dependent on modern technology and more addicted to mass-media distractions.

The flaw in what you're suggesting is that a lot of people today are specifically trained in those methods of analysis, because it's their job. Sherlock Holmes was, in a sense, the first CSI. Or, conversely, crime scene investigators and forensic scientists are all trained to use Holmes's methods. As Owain said, he isn't as unique these days. Conan Doyle's Holmes was the first of a new breed. Moffat and Gatiss's Holmes is merely a particularly gifted example of a larger group.

I thoroughly disagree. As someone who is a big fan of the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories, I found this to be one of the most faithful adaptations I've ever seen in terms of nailing the spirit of the characters. (Between this series & last year's Guy Ritchie film, it's nice to see that modern adaptations are going back to the source material instead of being bogged down in the historical bastardizations of the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce movies.)

Agreed. They both do a good job of modernizing the storytelling while still being very faithful to the essence of the originals.

- "Rache" written at the crime scene. (However, the context was very different. In A Study in Scarlet, the killer wrote "Rache" at the crime scene as a deliberate red herring to lead the police to believe that the victims were murdered as part of a German communist revenge plot.)

I found it amusing that the original ASiS explanation for what "Rache" meant was presented as simply a red herring here. Nice way to throw off the Holmes fans' expectations.

- Determining alcoholism by noticing the scratch marks on the cell phone's charger port (rather than the hole for a key to wind the watch).

The Ritchie movie also used a version of the pocketwatch scene. It's a popular thing to adapt, apparently.

Yeah, especially since it's not like Sherlock Holmes was originally conceived as a period character. The original stories are set in the Victorian era because that was the present day when ACD first wrote them.

Good point. And they moved generally forward through time, from "A Study in Scarlet" set in 1881 (published in 1887) to "His Last Bow" set in 1914 (published in 1917). So not exactly the present day, but close enough -- and a reasonable interval considering the conceit that Watson was dramatizing his and Holmes's actual cases. It makes sense he'd wait a while before publishing the details. (And there were 12 more stories published in the '20s but set earlier so that Holmes & Watson would still be reasonably young.)

Don't forget that technically "Sherlock" is a title and not a name.

Says who? I've never heard that before, and it seems that Google hadn't either, until you made that post anyway!

From here:
source 1
and
source 2
and
source 3
and
source 4

You should read those links more carefully -- they all say the usage came about specifically in reference to Sherlock Holmes. It was a personal name before it became a category label. And it's not a title for a detective, it's a nickname. Sherlock Holmes is a cultural archetype of the detective, so people started calling detectives "sherlocks" as a literary allusion.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Don't forget that technically "Sherlock" is a title and not a name.

Says who? I've never heard that before, and it seems that Google hadn't either, until you made that post anyway!

From here:
source 1
and
source 2
and
source 3
and
source 4

You do realize that it is because of Holmes that "Sherlock" has become slang for cop. Just like "Five-0" became slang for cops because of "Hawaii Five-0" Within the universes of both shows neither term exists. Its also pretty clear that Holmes' first name in the new show is Sherlock.