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The Hollywood Reporter review of Sherlock

It’s not hard to spot the hands at work of series creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, both part of the rescue team that helped rehabilitate “Doctor Who.” With his foppish taste in outerwear and scarves, it’s conceivable that Cumberbatch’s Sherlock shares the time-traveling doctor’s stylist, but there’s also a kinship in the eccentricities of two characters on their own frequently impenetrable wavelength.

Rock-star thin and with the beady gaze of a raptor, Cumberbatch comes from the same school as gifted, etiquette-challenged professional problem-solvers like Dr. Gregory House.

Would that, perhaps, be because Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes (and Prof. Bernard Quatermass, for that matter) are all cut from the same cloth? A type of distinctly English hero who solves problems with wits and eschews the use of brawn. This isn’t a case of Gatiss and Moffat retreading familiar ground; it’s a case of them returning to the source material that inspired Dcotor Who in the first place.

What’s annoyed me, though, is the “similar to House” line. That’s not a bloody coincidence, nor (as THR seems to be implying) is it because this modern Sherlock is derivative of House. Rather, show creator David Shore pitched House as “Sherlock Holmes solves medical mysteries” and based most of the character notes on Doyle’s work: drug addiction, musical instruments, no regard for the emotional state of clients/patients, obsession with puzzles and mysteries. He even mapped Watson directly into Wilson with just two changed letters!

Incidentally, I loved this Sherlock series. My American readers would be well advised to check it out.