General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Miss Sherlock (ミス·シャーロック)

Miss Sherlock (ミス·シャーロック) is a Japanese television mystery series, produced by HBO Asia and Hulu Japan, that reimagines Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson as two Japanese women in modern-day Tokyo¹. It aired between 27 April and 15 June 2018¹, with Yuko Takeuchi starring as the consulting detective nicknamed "Sherlock" and Shihori Kanjiya as her crime-solving partner, Dr. Wato Tachibana².

Key fact	Detail
Format	8 episodes of 60 minutes, in Japanese with English subtitles²^•³
Broadcast	Premiered 27 April 2018 across 20 Asian territories on HBO Asia's channels and services and on Hulu in Japan⁴
Leads	Yuko Takeuchi as Sherlock; Shihori Kanjiya as Dr. Wato Tachibana, the Watson figure²
Production	First co-production of HBO Asia and Hulu Japan; filmed by the Japanese studio ROBOT⁴^•⁵
Source material	Conan Doyle episodes reworked for Tokyo, including "The Devil's Foot" as the basis of episode 1⁶
Awards	Best Work at the 1st Asian Academy Creative Awards (2018); Excellence Award, satellite and streaming drama category, Tokyo Drama Awards 2018⁷
Availability	Streaming on Hulu in Japan as of September 2026⁸

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The series transposes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's characters to contemporary Tokyo, with both lead roles played by Japanese women¹. In the first episode, Wato Tachibana, a doctor returning to Tokyo after a volunteer medical mission, meets Sherlock, a search consultant with exceptional powers of observation and deduction, at a police station where she is performing an impromptu examination of a corpse; the two then take on a serial murder case called "Devil's Foot"⁹. The regular cast also includes Kenichi Takito as Inspector Reimon, Tomoya Nakamura as Sergeant Shibata, Ryohei Otani as Toru Moriya, Yukiyoshi Ozawa as Sherlock's older brother Futaba Kento, Yuki Saito as Mariko Irikawa, and Ran Ito as Kimie Hatano¹⁰.

The gender switch is treated as more than casting: when she is not solving crimes, Sherlock battles sexism in a male-dominated field¹¹. Common Sense Media describes the show as a Japanese crime drama with flawed, complex female leads, and notes that its stories raise questions of justice, rehabilitation, and women in the workplace¹².

Production

Origin of the project. The plan began in 2014, when Hulu producer Noriko Toishi sought a new drama series for Hulu's core audience of fans of foreign drama and film and turned to the production company ROBOT, whose producer Koichi Murakami proposed a "female Sherlock Holmes". The note cites the then-current boom in stories with two female leads, such as Frozen and When Marnie Was There, and the judgment that a world-famous property filmed in an unprecedented way had a high chance of success. The production note describes it as the first screen adaptation in which both Sherlock and Watson are played by women¹³.

Filming was handled by ROBOT, the studio behind major films such as the Umizaru series and ALWAYS: Sunset on Third Street¹³. The directors were Junichi Mori, Yusuke Taki, and Takashi Matsuo, and the writers included Shu Marumo, Nobuaki Kotani, Yosuke Masaike, Mami Oikawa, and Mori¹⁰. Executive producers were Kazufumi Nagasawa and Shinobu Mouri for Hulu, Jonathan Spink and Beibei Fan for HBO Asia, and Kazuyoshi Ishida for ROBOT¹⁰.

Relationship to the canon and to other adaptations

The series keeps the puzzle-solving core of the Holmes stories while rearranging representative episodes for Tokyo: the premiere is based on the later Conan Doyle story "The Devil's Foot"⁶, and later episodes adapt material including "The Three Gables" and "The Final Problem"¹⁴.

Scholarly commentary has emphasized how much the show borrows visually from the BBC's Sherlock (2010 to 2017). The floor plan of Holmes's apartment follows the BBC series closely in color scheme, set decoration, and kitchen placement; promotional material places Holmes and Wato against wallpaper resembling the BBC sitting room; location-transition sequences use comparable aerial and street-level shots; and Takeuchi wears a light trench coat with the collar turned up, echoing Benedict Cumberbatch's Belstaff coat, while the production adopts devices such as "floating images" illustrating Sherlock's thought processes. The same analysis argues the adapters domesticated Holmes by overtly appropriating these signature visual elements while altering plots to reflect current Japanese concerns, including the status of women, the state of the family, and social mobility¹⁵.

The BFI places Miss Sherlock among the wave of Gen Z-targeted variations that followed the BBC series, alongside Enola Holmes (2020), The Irregulars (2021), and Sherlock & Daughter (2025)¹⁶.

Reception

The series won Best Work at the first Asian Academy Creative Awards in 2018 and an Excellence Award in the satellite and streaming drama category at the Tokyo Drama Awards 2018⁷. On the Japanese review site Filmarks it holds a rating of 3.9 out of 5 from more than 4,500 user reviews¹⁷. Among English-speaking viewers it has retained a following; commentary has cited the performances of Takeuchi and Kanjiya as the reason to keep watching¹⁸, and one ranking describes it as an adaptation that highlights the world of Holmes from a different cultural perspective¹⁹.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › Japanese contemporary drama

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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