In BBC’s Sherlock, the serial killer’s taxi-driver alias in “A Study in Pink” is Jeff Hope.
Hope poses as an ordinary London taxi driver while selecting victims for his murder scheme. He approaches John Watson and explains that the victims are being forced to choose between two identical-looking pills, one supposedly poisonous.
The character is adapted from the cab driver in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Study in Scarlet,” although Sherlock changes many details from the original story. Jeff Hope is not Moriarty, Sherlock’s principal criminal rival; Moriarty is introduced separately in the first series.
The episode, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, premiered as the opening instalment of the series. Its title directly echoes Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes novel, while the taxi-driver plot gives the modern adaptation its first major detective mystery.