What it's about
Modern-day adaptation of Sherlock Holmes set in New York City: Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller), recovering addict, works as a consultant for the NYPD alongside Joan Watson (Lucy Liu), initially hired as his sober companion. CBS procedural, 24 episodes per season, a new case most weeks.
Free notes
From OSV Field Notes #36 (The OSVerse, 29 August 2026 · https://open.substack.com/pub/infiniteloops/p/osv-field-notes-36): a reader ("Liberty") on why the series works even though it arrived "at the wrong time" to be taken seriously (between Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and the glossier BBC Sherlock):
The weekly cases and murders are the pretext, not the reason the series holds up. It works because of the casting (Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes, Lucy Liu as Watson) and because of a choice that's never obvious: Sherlock and Joan don't become a romantic couple. They're allowed to become partners (after a rough start), best friends, and in the end almost family. Precisely because it isn't prestige TV and has hundreds of episodes, the two characters spend "hundreds of hours" together on screen, and you really see the relationship grow.
The other thing that sets this Sherlock apart: he has to work to be Sherlock. When he isn't solving a case, he trains: he reads, picks locks, studies insects or corpses, runs chemistry experiments, practises martial arts. Compared with Cumberbatch's Sherlock (almost supernatural deductions, little visible work) and Robert Downey Jr.'s (more action hero than detective), here genius is the visible result of a method, not a magic gift.