I was hesitative as to whether or not I should watch this show after the classic masterpiece by Igor Maslennikov with Vasily Livanov as Sherlock, Vitali Solomin as Watson, Rina Zelyonaya as Mrs.Hudson and Borislav Brundukov as Lestrade. I was afraid that pursuing the high profit the makers of this show would put too much in visual effects and action and little to nothing in reproducing the spirit of Conan Doyle's characters like it happened with the latest comic-like movie with Downey Jr. (which is fun and all, but isn't about Sherlock Holmes actually).

I'm glad that I was wrong in my concerns and that I have watched this show. It is brilliant. Sherlock is definitely very different from the classic Holmes as one would imagine reading Conan Doyle and is like a 100% opposite of Livanov's Sherlock, but this new Holmes is still a very interesting and fascinating character. It was a wise decision to bring the story to modern times where this crazy character seems much more fit than he would in XIX century.

It's a pity that Mrs.Hudson in this show is such a "pale" and secondary character. Indeed she was a secondary character in the book, but look at Rina Zelyonaya! She made an incredibly bright and remarkable secondary character. In this TV show I wouldn't even ask for the name of this actress.

Lestrade here is a very usual, average, standard, faceless, you name it, police inspector. Absolutely unremarkable. That's another con as compared to Maslennikov's TV series where Brundukov made a marvelous dumbhead yet not farcical inspector that you could very possibly encounter in a police department. In this show on the contrary, I suspect, they've been given a task to not offend the police and hence this pale and faceless character.

Dr.Watson on the other hand is brilliantly played by Martin Freeman and I'm glad that for this role they took an actor resembling my favourite Vitali Solomin. Watson played by Freeman matches my own image of this character very well and makes the show no less than Cumberbatch does.

All in all, I like this show a lot. I give it 8/10 for changing the original Conan Doyle's stories too much sometimes (in Baskerville Hounds for example). But in all the rest it's a brilliant show.