This spot was closely contested between Sherlock Holmes of Elementary and Sherlock. The first is antisocial, prone to rudeness and hates criminals to the extent that he's perfectly willing to frame people he knows but can't prove are doing harm. The second is antisocial, prone to rudeness and just does not care to the extent that he once turned up to Buckingham Palace wearing a bedsheet to prove a point. Recently however Detective Bell of Elementary took a bullet for Holmes, an injury that looks set to have lasting implications for both his physical health and career. It gave Holmes a chance to reflect on the consequences of his actions and showed his behaviour as irresponsible within the world of the show, effectively disqualifying him from the list. Sherlock of BBC fame however is a different story. The first episode shows him being shunned by the police and while we're clearly supposed to take this as a comment on their lack of due reverence to the misunderstood genius, I personally read it another way. Sherlock is a jerk. His first interaction with Sgt Sally Donovan set the tone for his treatment of women when he attempted to professionally humiliate her by loudly speculating that she'd recently performed oral sex on her married boss. Admittedly this is in answer to some unprofessional comments of her own, which of course excuses everything if you're under the age of twelve but not so much when you're a legal adult who for some reason was judged responsible enough to own and shoot a gun in an inner city area. Notably no judgement is passed on said boss by Sherlock or the writers, despite him being the one who is married. Isn't it sad that a purportedly modern version of Sherlock is still stuck firmly in the Victorian era when it comes to women? He clearly understands people's feelings but he doesn't care. Sherlock is, to put it bluntly, a bully and no amount of solving murders is going to excuse that, especially not when there's a much more compassionate version of him in New York who is just as capable and a hundred times as willing to admit when he is wrong or that his Watson is important to him, even though it is equally difficult. Admittedly Sherlock has recently done some soul searching and addressed the shortcomings of his character in his best man's speech at John's wedding. I'll be watching with baited breath to see if his treatment of the people around him changes as a result.
Kate Taylor has a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing and an MRes in Creative Writing. Her nonfiction, reviews and other articles have appeared on Cuckoo Review and Mookychick as well as WhatCulture. Her fiction has been published in Luna Station Quarterly, Eternal Haunted Summer and in anthologies by Paizo and Northumbria University Press. She is 23 and lives in the North of England.
