Earlier this year, Watson debuted on the 2025 TV schedule, giving CBS another hit Sherlock Holmes adaptation following Elementary’s seven-season run in the 2010s. The Morris Chestnut-led medical drama was renewed for a second season back in March, though it won’t premiere until 2026. While it’s great that Watson has performed well for CBS, there’s another TV show adapting the mythology centered around Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed detective that’s been a quiet success in recent months, and I hope this leads to even more people watching it.
Sherlock & Daughter premiered on The CW stateside on April 16, and it concluded its eight-episode first season earlier this week. But even before the Season 1 finale aired, the David Thewlis and Blu Hunt-led series was a standout on both the TV network and on the streaming front. Variety reports that following the show becoming available to stream with a Max subscription last week, it hit the #4 spot on the platform’s top 10.
Additionally, this past week also saw Sherlock & Daughter scoring its highest ratings of its debut season, growing almost 20% since its premiere. It ranks as The CW’s number one scripted series on linear, i.e. traditional television, and number two series on digital. The report also mentions that Sherlock & Daughter airs on the SBS network in Australia, and its total audience increased an average of 150% across its first four episodes. It seems safe to say that this series classifies as a TV sleeper hit. I’ve been enjoying Sherlock & Daughter since it first arrived and hope even more people check it out in the weeks ahead now that Season 1 can be viewed in its entirety.
Set in 1896, the series follows David Thewlis’ Sherlock Holmes meeting Blu Hunt’s Amelia Rojas, a young Native American woman from California who claims to be the detective’s daughter. While Sherlock is initially distrustful of Amelia’s claim, the two soon start working together when they learn that the recent murder of Amelia’s mother is tied to the conspiracy involving the Red Thread criminal syndicate, which has kidnapped Dr. John Watson and Mrs. Hudson to prevent Sherlock from interfering in their affairs.
Sherlock & Daughter is the second Sherlock Holmes adaptation that Thewlis has starred in, as he previously played the villainous police superintendent Grail in the Netflix subscription-exclusive movie Enola Holmes 2, which starred Millie Bobby Brown as the title character and Henry Cavill as Sherlock. Blunt is arguably best known for playing Danielle Moonstar, a.k.a. Mirage, in The New Mutants, as well as appeared in the TV shows The Originals and Another Life. This series’ other main cast members include Fiona Glascott, Joe Kloeck, Aidan McAdrle and Dougray Scott.
There’s no word yet on if Sherlock & Daughter will return for Season 2, though I’d like to think that these streaming and linear stats boost the chances of another batch of episodes being order. For now, we can look forward to yet another Sherlock Holmes TV show coming soon, as Guy Ritchie’s Young Sherlock starring Hero Fiennes Tiffin is being put together for Prime Video.
