In the second season of the BBC television series Sherlock, which places Holmes and Watson (portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, respectively) in contemporary London, the deerstalker cap is a recurring gag; here, Sherlock Holmes gains the iconic look by trying to hide his face from paparazzi by wearing the deerstalker, which he personally despises.
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As the deerstalker is the most typical cap of the period matching both descriptions, it is not surprising that the original illustrations for the stories by Sidney Paget in Great Britain, and Frederic Dorr Steele in the United States, along with other illustrators of the period, depicted Holmes as a "deerstalker man", which then became the popular perception of him.
In character, Mills sometimes wore a navy blue Inverness cape and cap that resembled a deerstalker; the program's opening titles showed animations of both.