Definitely stories of good vs. evil and the triumph of good over evil, played out in the heroic characters who can be objects of inspiration for the viewers. I think you hit the nail on the head, although I doubt extremely much that any of the writers and showrunners are Christians and actively seeking to weave their faith into the storylines-- more like an atheistic take-off on the idea of a passion play.

Thanks for the new thoughts. Interesting.

Oh wow, you people are making my head spin! Excellent parallels/observations all around.

I definitely don't get the feeling that all this is included in the show for the purpose of promoting any of it. If it were (which is extremely unlikely anyway), I'm sure the Christian imagery and references would all add up to one consistent pattern, which they don't. If, for example, Sherlock was intended to be a Christ figure, they wouldn't just include certain elements of that, and all of those in the wrong order - they'd make it a proper pattern than would make sense within itself. But I can't see any pattern of that sort. The references are thrown in almost randomly, so I think that's just what they are - references to the framework and to the imagery that makes up the cultural heritage of a great part of the western world.

As Liberty pointed out, the Bible is full of great, very fundamental, very powerful stories dealing with the biggest questions that people have ever asked and the biggest issues that people have ever had to contend with, so in a way every other story dealing with fundamental issues written later "owes" something to the Bible in that way, without any missionary intent.

I think this is just people using their hard-wired human skill in finding patterns in random stimuli. It's like the image of the mother and child, some people immediately say it's some form of reference to Maria and Jesus, despite the fact that EVERY culture has images of mothers and children. 

QI had a funny thing about that with Mithras.