If Sherlock teamed up with Mindhunter, you’d get this criminally underrated detective thriller

If you spent the 2010s glued to crime dramas, you’ll know that BBC’s Sherlock and Netflix’s Mindhunter are usually top of any list: both boundary-pushers, both essential, both endlessly rewatchable for their own reasons. But anyone who thinks they’ve seen every worthwhile entry in the genre may well have missed a proper gem: Elementary, the crime procedural that managed to merge the best bits of both those shows and—somewhat bizarrely—still ended up flying under the radar for most UK viewers.

'Elementary': The Other Modern Sherlock

Right, so Elementary first landed on CBS back in 2012, stretching out to a solid seven seasons and racking up 154 episodes before finishing in 2019. On paper, it does sound dangerously similar to BBC’s Sherlock—another update of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic detective, set in the present, with all the texting and tech wizardry you’d expect.

But here’s where it gets interesting: Elementary doesn’t just copy the formula. Created by Robert Doherty, this version shifts the whole thing to Manhattan, drags Sherlock away from damp, gloomy London, and hands the man himself a proper mess of personal baggage. Johnny Lee Miller’s Holmes is an ex-Scotland Yard consultant sent to New York after his father, the thoroughly un-charming Morland Holmes (played with relish by John Noble), shoves him into rehab for drug addiction. Spoiler: he’s not the easiest bloke to work with, absolutely refuses to play ball with NYPD protocol, and mostly winds up everyone around him.

But the best move Doherty made? Swapping out Dr John Watson for Dr Joan Watson. Yes, Lucy Liu’s Watson starts out as Sherlock’s live-in ‘sober companion’—an actual medical professional assigned to keep him from going off the rails post-rehab. It doesn’t take long before she proves she’s more than a minder, and joins Sherlock’s investigations properly, eventually becoming a full detective partner. If you think that’s a throwaway gimmick, it absolutely isn’t: the developing partnership (and genuinely believable friendship) between Miller and Liu is the show’s real hook. Both characters get to be brilliant, both get to be broken, and the show sidesteps virtually all the stale, so-called sexual tension you’d expect.

The supporting cast goes weirdly creative as well. Jamie Moriarty, played by Natalie Dormer, takes the spot usually reserved for James, and the chemistry there is intoxicating for all the right twisted reasons.

Why Does No One Talk About It?

Elementary drew its fair share of grumbling at the beginning, mostly from people who thought it was piggybacking BBC’s Sherlock. For my money, though, by shifting location, gender-flipping major roles, and refusing to pander to expectations, Elementary landed squarely on its own two feet. As the seasons ticked by, the show dived into everything from Holmes’s continual fight with addiction to Watson’s attempts to cope after quitting medicine in the wake of a fatal workplace tragedy.

Even if you’re not normally a TV procedural person, there’s a genuine emotional backbone here: family deaths, relapses, cancer, all the real-life curveballs—handled much better than you’d expect in network TV.

'Mindhunter' Fans—You’re Genuinely Missing Out

Now, if you’re the kind of person still desperately refreshing the internet for news of David Fincher’s long-rumoured Mindhunter follow-ups: Elementary is as good a way to fill the gap as any. Both shows hang on an oddball pair of detectives, neither particularly well-adjusted, who’ve got more shared baggage than the Heathrow arrivals carousel.

• Mindhunter: Slow, methodical—heavy on interviews with real-life serial murderers (the sorts you’d never want to sit next to on a train), prioritising psychological deep-dives alongside properly unsettling crime scenes.
• Elementary: Much snappier, more playful—the energy of a classic American procedural with a Sherlock twist. Less about unpicking why the killers kill, more about how they’re caught, and what’s going on with Holmes and Watson behind the scenes. The show isn’t afraid to throw in a bit of gallows humour, either, which helps to blunt some of the darker storylines.

Despite boasting a 96% Rotten Tomatoes score and arguably setting the bar for bingeable crime telly during the early years of the streaming wars, Elementary almost never gets talked about in the same breath as its more famous cousins. If you can stomach another procedural, it’s streaming now on Hulu and Prime Video.

'The expert detective work and playful rapport between Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu as Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson are too irresistible to miss on Hulu and Prime Video.'