TV Shows Like Elementary
If you like Elementary, here are 11 similar TV shows — each with its current AI renewal verdict, so you can see which are still going and which have been cancelled.
CBS · Drama · Elementary is ended
Elementary works because it earns its procedural cases instead of just presenting them. Sherlock Holmes is a familiar enough figure that the show had to do something genuinely different to justify its existence, and it did: setting the pair in New York, making Watson a woman and a sober companion, and treating addiction as an ongoing condition, not a backstory detail. That choice gives the show texture that most crime procedurals skip entirely. Jonny Lee Miller plays Holmes as someone whose brilliance is inseparable from his dysfunction, and the cases matter less than watching two complicated people figure out how to share a brownstone, a partnership, and a life.
The best shows like Elementary
1. Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Like Elementary, Criminal Intent is set in New York and built around detectives who solve cases by getting inside how people think. The show's Major Case Squad takes a psychological approach that gives it more depth than a standard procedural, and fans of Sherlock's observational methods will recognize the same basic pleasure: watching a detective disassemble a person's logic until the crime makes sense. It's darker and more serious in tone than Elementary, but the intellectual core is the same.
Stream on Peacock Premium, Peacock Premium Plus
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2. Ironside
Ironside has the same structural DNA as Elementary: an unconventional expert, kept at arm's length from full institutional authority, working with a small team to crack cases the regular department struggles with. The dynamic between Ironside and his team has the same push and pull that makes the Holmes-Watson relationship worth watching. It's an older show, and it shows its age in places, but the core formula holds up.
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3. Sherlock
The most direct comparison on this list, Sherlock is the other major modern Holmes adaptation running at the same time as Elementary, and it takes a completely different approach. Set in London and not New York, it leans into longer, more novelistic episodes and a Holmes who is deliberately difficult to like, at least at first. Fans of Elementary who want to see what the same source material looks like when you swap the American procedural format for something closer to a puzzle box thriller will find a lot to enjoy here.
Stream on Hulu, Philo, AMC Plus Apple TV Channel , Britbox Apple TV Channel
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4. Agatha Christie's Marple
Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes have more in common than the mystery genre: both are observers whom authority figures persistently underestimate, and both solve crimes through attention to human behavior and not forensic technology. Marple scratches the same itch as Elementary's quieter episodes, the ones where the case is really about reading people correctly. If you like Holmes but also want something slower and set in the British countryside, this is the natural place to go.
Stream on Hulu, Britbox Apple TV Channel , PBS, Acorn TV
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5. Castle
Castle is probably the most tonally similar show on this list to Elementary. It's set in New York, it's built around an unconventional civilian working alongside NYPD detectives, and it plays the friction between its leads for both comedy and genuine warmth. The cases are rarely the most interesting part, which is exactly how Elementary works. If you liked watching Sherlock and Watson learn to tolerate and then trust each other, Castle delivers a version of that dynamic with a lighter touch.
Stream on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
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More on shows like Elementary
Fans of Elementary tend to want a few specific things when they go looking for their next show. A central partnership with real friction and warmth. A crime-of-the-week structure that doesn't feel entirely mechanical. And ideally, some sense that the lead detective is a specific, slightly difficult person and not a generic investigator. Location matters too, whether that's New York's procedural grit or the British tradition of village murders and gothic country houses.
The recommendations here split neatly into two groups. Sherlock and Agatha Christie's Marple pull from the same literary tradition, Holmes on one end, Marple on the other, both set in Britain, both rewarding to fans who enjoy watching a socially unusual detective outthink everyone in the room. Castle and Law and Order: Criminal Intent keep it firmly in New York, both built around the NYPD, though Criminal Intent goes deeper and darker into criminal psychology while Castle plays the dynamic more lightly, leaning into the odd-couple energy between its leads. Ironside is the outlier chronologically and geographically, set in San Francisco and centered on a consultant with a complicated relationship to the department, but the shape of it, the unconventional expert working alongside officers who aren't always sure what to make of him, will feel immediately recognizable to anyone who spent time with Sherlock and Watson.
None of these shows are Elementary, but each of them understands something Elementary understood: the crimes are the structure, not the point. The point is always the people solving them.
More shows like Elementary
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like Elementary?
- Law & Order: Criminal Intent is the most popular show similar to Elementary in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like Elementary still on the air?
- Of the 11 shows similar to Elementary listed here, 0 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like Elementary?
- The recommendations come from TMDB's similar-titles data, and each is shown with its current AI renewal verdict so you know which are still going.