I was very skeptical at the premise before it premiered, but in watching it, I find it to be, in an odd way, the truest portrayal of Holmes and Watson since the books.

The contemporary setting also gives us a feel for what the strand readers would have experienced reading the stories. Modern London has many similarities with Holmes’ London, and the show picks up on that nicely.

The stories, while original, contain an amalgam of bits of the original stories out of context and wink wink references from the canon. It is really the only part that some Doyle fans might find annoying, but if you see it as deconstructing a body of work to remove the entrenched prejudices and preconceptions that are so much a part of “Sherlock Holmes”, you will appreciate the genius of the show’s creators.

They have managed to pare away all the gaslight trappings and bad movie cliches that have grown into something far beyond the source stories. The result presents something completely intact, restored nearly to what it started out as, that feels as fresh as when it was new 140 years ago.

Cheers.