Although the airwaves are packed with officers of the law and their sometimes amateur assistants, you don't see much in the way of private eyes these days, the Sam Spades and Jim Rockfords, to whom clients come for help and who charge such and such per plus expenses. There is possibly something to be said about what the balance of cops versus PIs on TV says about the national mood, or whether we're putting our faith in institutions or individuals, if one had the research grant. But the more immediate question is whether a show holds your attention and rewards your time.

Two such series begin this week. One, "R.J. Decker," is a classic example of the genre, with a Carl Hiaasen pedigree. The other, "Young Sherlock," from Arthur Conan Doyle via a series of young adult novels by Andrew Lane, imagines Holmes at 19 — and is therefore not strictly a private detective show, though the character he'll grow up to be will set the pattern for those to follow.

In "R.J. Decker," premiering Tuesday on ABC (and subsequently streaming on Hulu), Scott Speedman (who will always be the guy from "Felicity," though he is a nicely broken-in 50 now), plays the eponymous medium-boiled sleuth, a South Florida newspaper photographer turned PI, pulled from Hiaasen's 1987 novel "Double Whammy," which otherwise has nothing else to do with this show. (Hiaasen's "Bad Monkey" became an excellent series in 2024.)

The series opens with Decker outside a courthouse explaining to a strange woman — that is, a woman who's a stranger — that he's about to learn whether he'll be going to prison over a fight with a "kid" who was stealing his camera equipment, but who happens to be a state senator's son, and lied to police about the circumstances. Surprisingly, they have sex in his car, in a conveniently empty parking garage, before, almost as surprisingly, she turns out to be the final witness against him: She's Emi Ochoa (Jaina Lee Ortiz), the victim's brother, and her tearful, duplicitous testimony leads to a title card reading "Two Years Later." Decker spent 18 months of that time behind bars, and now he's living in a trailer (like Jim Rockford), an ex-con (like Jim Rockford) working as a private detective (like Jim Rockford) and dressing like Thomas Magnum. Decker will also find himself at the wrong end of a fist, also like Jim Rockford.

Surrounding Decker are his ex-wife, Catherine Delacroix (Adelaide Clemens), a journalist, with whom he's friendly; she's married to Det. Mel Abreau (Bevin Bru), with whom he's slightly less friendly. Wish Aiken (Kevin Rankin) is his old cellmate, whose innocence Decker managed to prove while they were both still incarcerated; freed from prison just one day before he would have been released anyway, Wish went out and bought a Scratcher, won a million dollars and bought a bar. You'll see a lot of this place.

Emi, whose family is "Fort Lauderdale's answer to the freaking Borgias" (says Decker), pops by the bar to apologize for helping send him up the river. (The sex was because she knew she would do it.) It puts her in his moral debt and will undoubtedly keep her around through the series. (Only two episodes were available for review, but her billing is high.) Though he takes a minute to upbraid her, they're obviously the show's binary system, and Decker is in any case a cheery sort who takes things in stride — even prison, seemingly. Which is not to say he doesn't want to see justice done. The show has a light, quirk-friendly tone it shares with its Tuesday night procedural partners "Will Trent" and "High Potential," also on ABC, and if you're the sort who likes to let a network play straight through prime time, this is a good place to park.

Coincidentally, the hero of "Young Sherlock" — beginning Wednesday on Prime Video and no relation to the 1985 film "Young Sherlock Holmes" — also starts his series with a prison sentence, having been nabbed while practicing pickpocketing. (It was just to develop the skill.) Respectable older brother Mycroft (Max Irons), who works for the foreign office, springs him from the pokey; he has got Sherlock (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), just 19, a place at Oxford, not as a student but a servant, a "scout" — a part he performs well — though this will change, of course, once the "game is afoot," as this Sherlock will declare.

This is something of an origin story, but the childhood trauma that haunts his dreams, and powers one of the series' main mysteries, has no evident influence on his waking personality; in fact, as Holmeses go, he's fairly normal — affectionate and puckish, if a little serious and proper. Though we're told he has no friends, it's mostly so the series can give him one. Surprisingly, that turns out to be James Moriarty (Dónal Finn), who will grow up, canonically, to become his archnemesis and evil double, "the Napoleon of crime." But for now he is a jovial Irish scamp, with the merest hint of a dark streak; where Sherlock comes from money, James, as he's called here, is at school on a scholarship. Indeed, the happiest invention of "Young Sherlock" is to make them friends and collaborators, if rivals when it comes to Princess Gulun Shou'an (Zine Tseng), a student newly arrived from China. Indeed, the show's greatest source of tension for me was worrying whether they'd get to remain pals. They make an adorable couple.

Because there's almost nothing in Doyle's stories about Holmes' early or private life, the pastiche-maker has a virtually blank canvas to work upon. "Young Sherlock" paints in a mother, Cordelia (Natascha McElhone) institutionalized, artistic; a father, Silas (Joseph Fiennes), absent, then present; and a sister, deceased, whose death is the source of Sherlock's self-accusal and nightmares. This is, however, only a starting point.

Written by Matthew Parkhill, with Guy Ritchie — who directed Robert Downey Jr. in two steroidal Holmes films — helming some episodes, it's pulpy and nutty and preposterous, mostly in a good way. There's fighting and running and shooting, with the Damned and Black Sabbath on the soundtrack and, of course, oodles of deduction, from Sherlock and James alike. There's so much going on, it's as if three or four films had been mashed into one. (It can be confusing.) There's the Mystery of the Missing Scroll, and the Case of the Dying Dons, with a kind of domestic drama in the middle, and an "Indiana Jones" finale, set in exotic locations, including a spin through the Paris Commune. Colin Firth plays Sir Bucephalus Hodge, a bigwig whose exact credentials escape me, but who's giving the university a new science building. Lestrade (Scott Reid), not yet a Scotland Yard inspector, appears as a blustery constable, and there's a Det. Fitget (Simon Delaney) who arrives in a deerstalker cap, smoking a pipe.

All eight episodes premiere at once, the better to binge them, and having stayed up until 2 a.m. doing just that, I can tell you it's not hard, and hard not to do.

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'R.J. DECKER'

How to watch: 10 p.m. ET Tuesdays on ABC (and streaming on Hulu)

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'YOUNG SHERLOCK'

How to watch: On Prime Video March 4

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