YMMV / The Adventures of Shirley Holmes

• Adaptation Displacement: The show was based on a series of four children's books published by Winklemania that starred an eight-year-old Shirley. Fans tend to be more familiar with the show than with the source material.
• Bizarro Episode: Any of the episodes that featured outright and unambiguous paranormal elements, like the Seer, the ghost, the alien, or the frigging Sea Monster.
• Complete Monster: El Condor from "The Case of the Precious Cargo" is a gangster who, with the help of a corrupt diplomat named Charles Tucker, smuggles people out of South America and into Canada. The refugees are led to believe that they will be released once they reach their destination, but in reality they are enslaved and put to work in sweatshops overseen by El Condor. When one refugee, a little girl named Luisa, escapes, El Condor abducts Luisa's aunt and threatens to kill her unless she helps him reclaim Luisa, also threatening to use his connections to have Luisa's imprisoned mother murdered back in South America. After Charles captures Luisa, as well as Shirley Holmes, El Condor elects to murder the girls and Rita and make it look like they were killed by Charles, who he is also going to kill, having decided the latter had outlived his usefulness.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Shirley and Bo.
• Growing the Beard: The show finds its footing in Season 2, where the mysteries become more mature and complex, and a few story-arcs start developing. Season 3 ramps this up by fleshing out Shirley and Bo's friends, making them more involved with the plots and giving them more to do.
• Jerkass Woobie: Molly Hardy. While Shirley has outright called her evil, she has also admitted that she pities her because Molly is "empty," and with the exception of her pet horse Foxglove, is largely incapable and unwilling to form attachments or bonds with anyone because of her sociopathy and the fact that her own parents do not appear to love her, as hinted at in "The Case of the Maestro's Ghost."
• Older Than They Think: The concept apparently dates back to the 1960s, at least. Also, there was a 1986 Soviet comedy featuring a Distaff Counterpart to Sherlock Holmes named Shirley. That's about where the similarities end.
• Retroactive Recognition: Ryan Gosling played Sean in "The Case of the Burning Building."
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: While the show usually did typical Kid Detective stories, every so often there was an Unexpectedly Dark Episode which pitted Shirley against the likes of human traffickers/slavers, a serial arsonist, terrorists, spies, a murderous Corrupt Corporate Executive, assassins, a violently psychotic man with Noah delusions, an (admittedly nerdy) cult leader who believed in creating an intellectually superior Master Race, etc. Hitler and the Nazis get name-dropped, Shirley's mother disappeared during the Rwandan Genocide, and Bo's parents are Ukrainian refugees who were persecuted by the Soviets and jailed (after being informed on by the son of one of their own friends) by the KGB.

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