Entente cordiale: Netflix’s Lupin and the BBC’s Sherlock, a Tale of Two Fandoms

Maurice Leblanc’s gentleman thief, Arsène Lupin, has a long and complex relationship with Sherlock Holmes, his British counterpart. In fact, it was the latter’s renown that inspired both the genesis and content of the Lupin œuvre, at the dawn of the last century. A similar dynamic still operates in the contemporary avatars of each character, the BBC’s Sherlock (2010–17) and Netflix’s Lupin (2021). This chapter examines the nuances of the Sherlock-Lupin dynamic through the lenses of popularity and fandom, evident in both the plotlines of each show and in how they approach their source-texts. However, where Sherlock presents a modern-day retelling of Doyle’s tales, Lupin insists on fandom as a way of appropriating not only the text, but also the ‘powers’ attributed to its protagonist. In outlining how the two series approach their intra-textual fans, then, the chapter draws on the precepts of reception and celebrity studies, in their capacities to shed light on the more fervent and obsessive spaces within the public sphere. Complicated by these relationships, the chapter explores the association that the shows’ creators have with their subject matter, and how they use ‘adaptation’ to articulate the connections audiences have with new iterations of beloved characters.