The plot thickens as China goes crazy for Holmes and Watson

The latest series of the BBC’s Sherlock, a modern-day reimagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic Victorian detective stories, has become a phenomenon in China. Five million people watched the first episode within hours on January 2 when it was streamed with Chinese subtitles on the video hosting platform, Youku.com – its most popular programme ever.

Student Zhou Yeling, 19, from the city of Changsha, said of the latest episodes, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as Dr Watson: “I was excited beyond words.”

Online fan clubs of the show have attracted thousands of members. Chinese fans write their own stories to fill the time between the brief, three-episode seasons. In Shanghai, an entrepreneur has even opened a Sherlock-themed café.

Holmes is known in China as ‘Curly Fu’, after his Chinese name, Fuermosi, as well as actor Benedict Cumberbatch’s floppy hairstyle.

Watson, played by Martin Freeman, is ‘Huasheng’, a name that sounds like ‘Peanut’ in Mandarin. They have become two of the most popular terms in China’s vast social media world. “The Sherlock production team shoot something more like a movie, not just a TV drama,” said Yu Fei, a veteran writer of TV crime dramas for Chinese television.

Scenes in which Holmes spots clues in a suspect’s clothes or picks apart an alibi are so richly detailed that “it seems like a wasteful luxury”, Yu said. Even the Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily is a fan, saying of the third season’s premier episode: “Tense plot, bizarre story, exquisite production, excellent performances.”

With its mix of odd villains, eccentric aristocrats and fashionable London settings, Sherlock can draw on a Chinese fondness for a storybook version of Britain. Wealthy Chinese nationals send their children to local branches of British schools such as Eton and Dulwich, while on the outskirts of Shanghai, a developer has built Thames Town, modelled on an English village with mock Tudor houses and classic red phone booths.