Sherlock Holmes is the index case for serial fiction featuring the same characters through a long number of stories. (Though The Odyssey and myths about Hercules and Theseus could be elaborated upon and sliced up to make a TV series and the same is true about some Chinese stories such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West)

It is great commercially because fans will eat it up but I think many authors aren’t happy with working under the constraints it brings.

One can imagine poor, blind, Homer, having been fed up with his Odysseus fen asking for yet another year's worth of adventures, deciding to sing about Ithaca and Penelope once and for all.

I was thinking of that. And G.K. Chesterton killed off Father Brown, and had to bring him back.

Reminds me of J.D. Salinger and how he was always mildly irritated that despite having written many other novels (Franny and Zooey, Bananafish, etc.) he is only ever remembered for Catcher in the Rye.