It is a perfect reinvention of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle character. It's all there. The moods, the mind, the darkness. Too often, people who try to do Holmes turn him into a caricature, play up the deer stalker and the pipe and play down the very real demons that were written into the man. Moffat has not shied away from the obsessions, the addictions, or the compulsions that accompany the brilliance. There's a fabulous scene in one episode where he gets bored, paints a smiley face on the wall of his living room in yellow spray paint, and then shoots at it with Watson's Browning. Characterization perfected.
Watson, too, is right on. He's a man of action and intelligence who needs what Holmes has, the fire and the bright sheer insanity, to pull him out of the pain of his own past. He's also a normal man trying to keep up with a genius. You can see the strain of what that is like well-played. It is not always easy to be the friend and the point of stability for someone like Holmes. I like that this Watson isn't written as a hero-worshiper who is blind to all of the negative qualities. He admires, but not without awareness. He does serve as the steady foundation that Holmes needs to ground himself, though, something he can rely on to be there so he can dance on and over the edge and know that there is something to pull him in even though he would probably never admit to that concept or that need. And then, of course, there is Holmes' need for an appreciative audience...
And then there is Moriarty.... Well. If Holmes describes himself as a "high-functioning sociopath" and really is, imagine what this new Moriarty has been made. I think it's going to be a grand series. It seems Moffat cannot miss.
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And then you said.....