The first season is actually what sold me on
Elementary, I was actually disappointed that they didn't do more season-long Big Bads like in that one. I also wound up liking Joan (and Liu) more than I thought I would, though her original role as a dropout sober companion was a bit hackneyed until they found her a better place as Sherlock's equal but lacking in the/having different experience.
That's actually one of my bigger complaints with
Sherlock, even into the fourth season (which I have now seen and aren't quite as harsh on as people above lol, though I would ultimately probably agree on the Mary arc) Watson is never really shown to be much help or an equal or even an actual friend, it's just all said that he is but it's not really shown. Earlier on there were more touches of him knowing things Sherlock would/should miss, and they share jokes like companions, but he's never made into more than a... pet. Joan became the more believable partner to Sherlock to me. Some of that factors in simply due to the amount of time they had together (26 "44 minute episodes" versus 154) but other stuff factors into this like how
Sherlock's Sherlock (and Mycroft... and Eurus) is simply written as superhuman and unrelatable to anyone in the end.
Like I said above, I was somewhat surprised by this as I expected to prefer the BBC version simply because the other is a procedural but ultimately I don't. By the third series and very much into the fourth series I was borderline calling out the "reveals" ahead of time not because they were ever setup but because the writing had become so obvious. The problem became that the execution didn't save it.
minor fourth series thoughts that I'll put here just in case
-Eurus was setup better but didn't have the payoff of Moriarity, and the finale was more tedious than anything.
-I would have preferred more epilogue than that "case" especially due to where they took the plane thing
-Mycroft should have probably died and I wonder if it was due to the writer being the actor that he didn't, ultimately it made the whole thing not even matter imo, the only victims were nobody you cared about
-There was a hell of an employment case relating to all those men who worked at the prison
-Mary should have been alive longer, getting killed by Eurus in the finale would have been a smarter decision to connect with her more, especially after the reveal of who she was, immediate forgiveness straight into heroic sacrifice was too silly
-the actress for Eurus should have been the actress for the "daughter" of Culverton Smith too just for fun because it wouldn't have spoiled anything either to where I'm surprised they didn't actually do it
