LONDON — A riveting exhibition here at the Museum of London has capitalized on the full-blown Sherlockmania that seems to have seized the Western world, judging by a new spate of movies, television shows and books.
Unexpectedly, the show, “Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Never Lived and Will Never Die,” which has drawn record numbers to the museum and continues until April 12, does not focus on the stories about Holmes or his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, though an opening section shows some early notebooks and illustrations as well as a rare portrait of the author in his 30s.
“We deliberately didn’t want to make it a text- and manuscript-heavy library exhibition,” said Alex Werner, the lead curator. “It’s about the character, and although I had a bit of trepidation about putting on an exhibition about a fictional being, we tried to set him firmly against the real city of London in which the stories take place.”
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Speaking on the telephone during a break while filming the special episode of “Sherlock,” Mark Gatiss, who created the series with Steven Moffat, said that Conan Doyle had given Sherlock one crucial characteristic.
“He has an achievable superpower,” he said. “You read it or watch it, and you think, ‘Maybe I could be as clever as Sherlock Holmes.’ ”
A version of this article appears in print on February 10, 2015, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: The London Holmes Knew. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
