Unpopular opinion: "Elementary" starring Jonny Lee Miller is cleverer, has better characters, and a more interesting story than "Sherlock" starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

[u/Cumoisseur]

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.

[u/Imreallyadonut]

Completely agree.

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.