Yes, this is a rather obvious point, but one worth making because Elementary is not one of those shows that seems content to only have one good episode out of every five. There is a good standard to the episodes, one which very much reminds me of House (more on that later). The season lengths are very British and American-centric. The BBC's Sherlock has typically very short seasons, but seeing as it's a Sunday night show, the episodes themselves are quite long verging on movie length. By the end of season three, there will have been nine episodes broadcast since the series premiered on 25 July 2010. In typical American fashion for season lengths, the number of episodes of Elementary blows Sherlock out of the water. By the end of the second season later this year, some 48 episodes will have been broadcast. Also remember that Elementary started later than Sherlock did the premiere episode was on 27 August 2012. So Sherlock had a two-year head start and yet has only produced a fraction of the number of episodes. This need for a pretty standard American-length season also required a number of changes in Elementary. On an episode by episode basis, Sherlock is better written. But you've also got to wait two years for another three episodes. In Sherlock, you tend to get stories either based on the old stories, or where they've used the old story titles as inspiration for new ones. But because Elementary would burn through these in half a season, they needed to be far more original in the plots of each episode. So you only get hints of those characters appearing in Elementary, such as when Vinnie Jones played the character of Sebastian Moran. Of course you also have the corresponding reveals of Irene Adler and Moriarty in both Sherlock and Elementary... but more on both of those in a while.
