The age of the great American cop show is over. Yes, franchises like NCIS and Law & Order are likely to continue until the heat death of the universe, but network TV used to be packed full of idiosyncratic crime-solvers, usually but not necessarily working hand-in-hand with local law enforcement. That came to a sharp stop in 2020, as a new cultural conversation about “copaganda” led to a dramatic sea change in what Americans as an audience wanted out of their escapist entertainment.
That also led to the quiet ending of what really was, in retrospect, a solid era for crime TV. The 2010s had a lot of good mystery-of-the-week shows, where fake psychics, con artists, famous writers, and/or the occasional supernatural creature helped their local police department unravel baroque homicides. While this also meant we were in a weird period when some of the most elaborate fictional murders ever staged were somehow considered wholesome prime-time entertainment, it did make for solid TV. One of the most critically successful shows of the period, CBS’s Sherlock Holmes adaptation Elementary, is now streaming for free in its entirety on the Roku channel, ready for your next crime-TV binge.
Elementary is a modernization of the Sherlock Holmes story, which sets it in present-day New York City. When the show begins, Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) is newly sober, following a stint in rehab for narcotics addiction, and has relocated from London to Manhattan.
Holmes’ father, without consulting him, hires Dr. Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) to live with him as his “sober companion.” Watson, a former surgeon turned addiction specialist, gets dragged along for the ride as Holmes pursues his only real passion: solving murders as a consultant for the NYPD.
Watching Elementary for the first time in 2026, it’s one of the more entertaining depictions of Holmes. Miller plays him as brilliant but unfocused, and he’s consistently on thin ice with every person around him in one way or another. It’s a far cry from the mellower Holmes of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, but Miller’s version is newly sober and recently traumatized. If you give it a few episodes, it does eventually make sense that Elementary‘s Holmes is one big raw nerve.
Liu’s Watson begins the show in an unfortunate position, as a relatively normal person who gets drawn into Holmes’ chaos, so the first few episodes don’t give her that much to do. Once she’s gotten her sea legs, however, Watson’s medical experience gives her a leg up on Holmes in several cases. Almost as soon as the viewer could notice the issue here, it was addressed.
There may never be another show like Elementary
The mysteries are what usually keep your attention in any given episode, however. It’s not hard to see why Elementary caught on, as it moves fast, is often clever, and there’s usually enough information that you can at least guess at each episode’s perpetrator before Holmes’ big reveal. A couple of them do fall prey to that problem you get if you watch enough TV, where you can usually assume the actor that you recognize is the culprit, but that’s not exactly Elementary‘s fault.
The worst-aged part of Elementary by now may be its emphases on addiction, recovery, and the process of healing. This might’ve been groundbreaking in 2012, particularly as applied to one of fiction’s great cocaine addicts, but in 2026, when the real villain of every A24 horror movie is undiagnosed trauma, it gets repetitive. That can make the one-off episodes of Elementary more entertaining than the ones that tie into any longer-running plot arcs.
Elementary is a solid example of a type of TV that might be out of fashion for the foreseeable future. Miller’s Sherlock Holmes is a socially maladjusted genius who’d be insufferable if he wasn’t good at exactly one thing, and if there wasn’t usually some amount of method to his madness. It’s worth watching at least a few episodes to see if this version of Sherlock Holmes resonates with you.
