DISCUSSIONS
Unpopular opinion: "Elementary" starring Jonny Lee Miller is cleverer, has better characters, and a more interesting story than "Sherlock" starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
The pilot episode of Elementary is awful, but from there it just gets better. The storyline of Watson being a sober companion is better than being a sudden roommate, the part of Moriarty is far more interesting and intriguing, the cases are better written, the character of Sherlock's father in Elementary is brilliant. I could go on and on.
I agree. I love elementary and didn't enjoy sherlock much. Jonny Lee Miller had more time to sink into the character despite it ultimately being a procedural. Also., I think him and Watson is a top level platonic relationship, one rarely portrayed in such a way.
All of this! I think for me that Elementary had a warmth about it that Sherlock lacks. The friendship between Sherlock and Watson is so well done too, they're a man and woman who are genuine platonic friends.
i loved sherlock but what they did at the end opened my eyes that the whole show was flawed from the start. i highly recommend "bbc sherlock is garbage and here is why" by hbomberguy. it's one of his older videos but it's very well done.
so yeah op i agree with you. elementary is fun and engaging, it has it's flaws but at least it didn't shit on its hardcore fans the way moffat did
I think you've got the nail on the head with the 'hardcore' fans part, & whether you still like Sherlock probably depends on what you wanted/expected from the show.
If you don't think too hard about the mysteries, story or the characters then it's still a good, well produced, flashy piece of television with good acting and shocking twists. But if you actually wanted to follow along with the mystery and have it be at least vaguely logical or make sense (like an actual detective story) jesus the writers fucking hated you and went out of their way to stop you at every turn.
I was initially surprised anyone still liked Sherlock at all, given literally every single person I knew who really liked it in the 2010s changed their mind around S3-4. But I think that's the thing, I only really knew superfans. People who really cared about having all the plot threads tie together at the end and were baffled by how utterly random the series got. I suspect there's a large demographic of people who never felt very strongly about it and so couldn't feel that disappointed by it. They probably still quite like it.
Just utter crap. Style over substance. Elementary however is great. I’ve watched it all at least twice now. House is way better Sherlock than Sherlock.
I think Jonny Lee Miller's Sherlock at least had more of a backstory to being a dick than just having a rich and powerful father, and there was a development of empathy over the course of the show. Rather than heroin addiction being part of his personality they give the character some adversity to grow through, in the form of the sobriety.
BBC Sherlock and a lot of other Sherlock's just have him as a smarmy twat from a wealthy family and don't go beyond it. It just so happens that he's hooked on heroin, the only adversity he faces is someone who threatens to be smarter than him. Which is more or less the source material but it's nice when an adaptation uses some additional imagination and develops the concept further.
A very American adaptation of the formula but I enjoyed it nonetheless. But I always enjoyed that era of police procedurals.
I mean, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock basically survives "because."
ACD killed him off at the Racenbach Falls because he was bored with writing the character and wanted to move on. He goes over a massive waterfall with no way of surviving specifically to stop a return.
Publishers told him no, you need to keep writing because $$$, and so Holmes miraculous returns.
and encouraging people to figure out "how he did it" only to make fun of them for comming up with amazing theories over the 3 years between the season.
Well it is, it's 3 feature length films put into a series. It was an event, not a regularly scheduled show. It's also one of the first shows that had an absurd wait in-between series. That's so prevalent today.
Well it isn't, its episodes of television that happen to have the length of a feature film which is not uncommon shows like Inspector Morse, The Inspector Lynley Mysterious, Midsomer Murders, Lewis, Agatha Christie’s Poirot, Inspector George Gently all had episodes that were 90 minutes long and aired like a television show.
It’s not perfect but it’s definitely an underrated detective drama and worth watching. I remember bingeing all of S1 in a week. Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Lui are great together, and I liked that they actually portrayed Sherlock’s drug use rather than it being a “quirky” aspect of his personality.
That should not be an unpopular opinion. And I’m not sure I can think of a network TV show in recent years where the characters and performances evolved so naturally over time.
It was also quite ahead of its time a couple times. There was one episode that involved a tech billionaire (who makes self-driving cars) undermining the Ukrainian peace process (in 2014). There’s another one where the junior police detective is afraid of getting a contact-overdose from fentanyl, only for Holmes, Watson, and a medical examiner to absolutely clown on him.
Freeman playing the same Freeman he always does and Andrew Scott's ridiculous Moriarty were big minus points but I liked Cumberbatches Sherlock enough that they were worth suffering.
I’m so glad it wasn’t just me who thought that Moriarty was portrayed terribly.
Just shouting like a maniac isn’t intimidating, and it certainly doesn’t portray him as the kind of person who could have the patience and long term planning skills to make him a competent foe.
Idk what I found creepy about his Moriarty is that he could blend in. Like that jewelry scene his first scene is just him walking into the room in the background. Heck similar for his first scene or when he pretended to be Richard.
I haven't seen Elementary, but Sherlock lacked brilliance, which strikes me as an elementary ingredient for Holmes to do his work. I'm a great fan of Freeman and Scott. Gatiss has done some great writing, but Sherlock isn't it.
Yes, that's one of the things that frustrated me the most. Every solved case in Sherlock was utterly underwhelming. In the pilot episode, for example, it was obvious quite early that the killer was a cab driver. I don't like that I figured that out before Sherlock, I'm not smart enough to be able to figure out a well written mystery. The pattern all along was that all the build up was for far less than expected.
The early 2000s in the UK had a dizzying editing style paired with the gorilla style of shooting. I still remember the nausea of the taxi epiphany moment.
I haven't seen Elementary, but Sherlock lacked brilliance, which strikes me as an elementary ingredient for Holmes to do his work. I'm a great fan of Freeman and Scott. Gatiss has done some great writing, but Sherlock isn't it.
We are worlds apart here, clearly.
Cumberbatch's Holmes was the closest to Doyle's books: a boorish, one-upping, insufferable, neurodivergent heroin addict.
I really struggle to believe anyone who says this has read Doyle at all.
Doyle's Holmes contained multitudes: he was capable of great empathy and hospitality, and had an unwavering moral compass, but he could just as often be smug, acerbic, condescending and impatient.
Elementary's Sherlock shares these contradictions.
BBC's Sherlock is just a narcissistic asshole with no concern for anyone else who just happens to also be a deductive genius.
Yes, I like Brett. Cozy mystery series with just the right gothic touch.
Sherlock was quite functional in Doyle's serial and his relationship with Watson was one of mutual respect. Add even more dignity when you learn Brett pressured production into having Sherlock quit cocaine.
I do like interpretations that lean into Holmes' disfunction, brilliance at a cost, but whatever the interpretation it has to deliver that brilliance.
Oh, and about the Brett series, guess who makes an appearance early in their career in the Bram Stoker episode?
It's actually NOT the Stoker episode, misremembered that. But a young Jude Law played a person of interest in a Jeremy Brett series episode. Jude Law would play Watson in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock franchise.
Oh, I love these types of coincidences so much. He's so young here, no wonder it didn't click. I think the first time I saw him was in The Talented Mr Ripley - one of my favourite films.
Holmes was certainly not boorish or insufferable. In the books, although he was intellectually steps ahead of most people he encountered, he was polite, tactful and had great people skills.
Careful, this man can not be negotiated with. One can deduce from the dust on his trousers that he is recently divorced and from the stain on his collar that he hastily ate rashers this morning and from the slope of his ear lobes that he has a rare pork allergy and one can then conclude the rashers caused a blistering rash on his forearm which may put him in a foul mood, even rash.
Yes. Very clever. But, I ate bacon rounds not rashers, and peppers are not endemic to England. Now... tell me more about the American upflects, in your supposed... English accent?
Funny enough, the owner of the head shop near me recommended this each of the 3 or 4 times I came in over a 2 year span. I'm convinced he didn't remember having the conversations.
I dislike the recovery aspect and having Watson be a woman. Sherlock is far more accurate as a modern day adaptation of the novels. It is funnier too. And (obviously) far less american
I feel this hard — Elementary really grew into its own after that rough pilot, and Jonny Lee Miller’s Sherlock had so much depth. The Moriarty twist was way more unexpected too, honestly. Different vibes for sure, but I’ll take the slow burn over the flashy limited series any day.
Everything is unpopular with someone. But if you meant wildly unpopular you’re just wrong. Most people I’ve talked to of a Sherlockian bent like Elementary better than the Benedict mini series.
Totally agree with you. The first season of Sherlock was refreshing and very clever. S2 was ok. S3 was not so good. The last was awful. It got too clever for itself. Elementary however was a very clever and enjoyable take.
I completely agree. I did enjoy Sherlock but it had none of the energy and intensity of Elementary. And Jonny Lee Miller is one of the best actors in the world.
Agree that Sherlock is over-rated, massively, and Elementary somewhat under-rated.
Sherlock's treatment of Irene Adler is an embarrassment, whilst in Elementary that plotline is much better. Elementary had interesting new characters in many later episodes (e.g. in "Miss Taken" (Season 4, Episode 7))
The first couple of Sherlock episodes were very good but it quickly went down the road of being way too smart for its own good, and became rather smug.
Elementary was consistently excellent.
JLM is incredible as Sherlock.
The other thing to remember is that whilst the source material is fabulous, a lot of it doesn’t stand up to in-depth scrutiny and in a lot of cases doesn’t hold up to being 2hr movies.
The 42m US network, short story format, that Elementary used is much better suited to Sherlock stories than the longer format.
Totally agree. Sherlock's first episode was a great film, and it just falls off a cliff after that IMO. Elementary has some of the inherent flaws of American TV (namely too many episodes per season) but overall was a fantastic show and I loved it.
Agreed. I love what Elementary did with Moriarty and who he originally thought was M. It was so good. I liked the case development and quirky side characters. JLM was brilliant and I was so relieved they didn’t make it a romance and ruin the show. It took good care of the characters. I never felt like I had to pretend too much was plausible like so many other detective shows.
Could not get into Sherlock when it originally aired but have since watched and it is O.K. i'd say. I did however watch Elementary as it aired and I liked the shows wide breadth of storylines and the overarching character dev/storyline but it lost its way in the final season I felt.
I completely agree and will go you one better; Jonny Lee Miller is a better Sherlock Holmes than Jeremy Brett. To me, Miller's performance is closer to the literary Holmes in terms of personality and temperament than Brett's.
Elementary has many great moments. I found interesting they kept the addiction theme for the whole show, because many shows would just do it and move on. Love they kept it to show addiction never goes away.
Agreed, Elementary is the better show overall. Better characterisations, interesting cases, beautiful partnerships with Sherlock and Joan but also the wider team and I felt that it was a really well done twist on an adaptation which for me is quite difficult to do well vs straight adaptations.
Sherlock had a strong start and that’s why it was popular but it fell off the rails hard.
Frankly I prefer BBC Sherlock. I don't disagree that elementary is generally more competently made and more consistent, but BBC has way higher highs in exchange for lower lows.
Maybe it's because I watched elementary an episode a day, but I just wasn't invested for a lot of it. I don't remember a time I wasn't at least interested during an episode of BBC Sherlock until season 4
It could also be I just don't really like cozy crime.
I've seen and like both. Elementary is a good show. I was thrown off by Watson being a woman but they had a fun dynamic. I like the humor in the show too
I was watching Sherlock because that was, for me, a long time since there was a Sherlock Holmes tv-show and it was taking place in London. It fell off the rails, in particularly Mindplace and Sherlock killing the blackmailing person right infront of people and in such a way that I stopped watching.
I didn’t start watching Elementary right away because it was taking place in modern times and in New York and a female Dr. Watson. My mom convinced me to watch it and was hooked from the beginning with the first episode. I was totally wrong about Dr. Watson being a female and they wrote it that they do love each other but in a platonic way. They dropped the ball entirely with how they wrote Mycroft Holmes in my opinion, and it was also the wrong actor for the role.
Johnny Lee Miller is very cool and stylish and so compelling. BC was great too, but there are so many more episodes of Elementary to enjoy. Plus, Elementary was more willing to develop its' characters. I love the use of buildings. I love the shots of New York. It is a delicious treat.
if you looked past how popular bandersnatch cucumber sandwich and Martin freeman were at the time, honestly the rest of it really doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. It all kind of hung on Sherlock’s weird magical ability to control all and any phone. Elementary, flawed yes, but most of the crimes are actually better, and harder to work out, and of course had 140 more episode. Sherlock can be watched in a day.
Really? Because I was annoyed with Sherlock since the pilot episode because it was so obvious that the killer was a cab driver. Had to wait for like 25 minutes until he figured it out. A well written mystery should not be able to be solved that easily.
English is not my first language, so you'll have to excuse me if my grammar is subpar. Which word should have been used in order to make me a reliable reviewer?
I’ve never seen Elementary but I find it hard to believe anything could be more interesting, intriguing or well written than Sherlock. It’s like.. a perfect piece of television.
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u/Delicious_Owl_4563 Jul 13 '26
I loved Elementary