WI: Challenger displaces Holmes?

One of my flatmates purely coincidentally is also a fan of AH and is writing his own TL, albeit not on this site. It began as background for a story he wanted to write but got out of hand. Hes not a big fan of the butterfly effect, preferring to keep his TLs more convergent with OTL. The basic premise of his TL is a successful 1848 Revolution, with Germany uniting under Prussia, with Austria remaining separate and taking its own path.

One of the small details of the TL is that Conan Doyles' writing career is substantially altered. This world's Britain is more prosperous from a more effective Second Industrial Revolution and fewer colonial wars. There is also an altered party system which makes poorer peoples' lives slightly better. Poverty is lower, so crime is lower, and the Sherlock Holmes stories never really take off in popularity as they did in OTL. His Professor Challenger stories on the other hand appeal enormously to a populace who can see the world substantially changing as industrialism takes hold. He writes many more Challenger stories, and Sherlock Holmes becomes a relative footnote.

Taken away from his actual TL, with this detail alone, what could be the consequences of a small literary divergence? The Challenger books are rather predicated on olde worlde science which may be ridiculed in later years in a way the Holmes stories are not. I was also rather taken with an image in my mind of a Sherlock style drama on the BBC updating Professor Challenger to the 21st century.
 
2 possibilities for that tv series
1. House as played by Hugh Laurie fits the bill in most ways
2. BRIAN BLESSED was born to play the role.
 
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