Speed Detection, intertextuality and audiences in Sherlock

In its English context, Sherlock was a huge success when broadcast on BBC One. The series, however, soon also became the center of a massive, creative, mostly online-based fan attention. Consequently, Sherlock is an interesting example of the co-existence of traditional flow television viewing and transmedia, participatory produsage culture. Taking examples from Sherlock as points of departure, the article advocates the importance of textual analysis of Sherlock’s audience involving strategies and its institutional hypertexts in order to understand how a broadcast series turned into an Internet phenomenon. The article furthermore suggests that distinctions between active and passive as well as knowing and unknowing audiences are inert in the series and open it towards the collective intelligence of new kinds of audiences. Finally, the article illustrates how institutional as well as popular contributors shape the hyper textual, transmedia narration of the series within the twin fields of fact and fiction and thus understands Sherlock as an example of a broadcast television series crossing the threshold into post-television culture