William of Baskerville and Adso, in The Name of the Rose. As suggested by William’s place of origin, they’re a deliberate homage to Holmes.
James Rockford and Angel Martin
Thomas Magnum and Higgins
Deitrich and Fish
Tony Stark and Pepper Potts?
In this way and in the unusualness of the pater’s methods, Father Brown and Flambeau match, but the good father is lacking on known addictions.
In Sax Rohmers Fu Manchu series we have detective Nayland Smith and his associate Dr Petrie.
In S S Van Dines Philo Vance series we heave detective Philo Vance and his Watson S S Van Dine. (Van Dine used his own name for the character.)
Who else indeed? The title character of Doctor Who is often said to owe a lot to Sherlock Homes. Addiction: jelly babies?
Yes, I think it fits. Morse is the intellectual, lazy, misanthropic loner who solves crimes through insight into character and occasional flashes of brilliance. Lewis, his sidekick, is the salt of the Earth, commonsensical everyman, very loyal to Morse despite how Morse teases and takes advantage of him (just as Holmes does of Watson). In the TV show, also (I imagine the books were too long ago) Lewis also has one significant area of expertise that Morse lacks, although in this case it is computers rather than medicine.
I thought of this: but no. Lewis is still the same Lewis, except that he is now the boss (and they killed off his wife, making him a bit more dour). Hathaway is the supercilious intellectual. In some respects Hathaway is like Morse (though not so obviously misanthropic), but since he is younger, and the subordinate, the dynamic is quite different. I am not sure that I do not think Lewis and Hathaway actually works better than Morse and Lewis did, but the former does not fit the archetype and the latter did.
Flambeau, the mercurial former criminal, could hardly be more unlike Watson, though.
And if an addiction is a requirement, to return to my former theme, Morse has beer and Wagner. (Of course, Holmes is a music lover too.)
Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Wolfe’s addiction was orchids.
But he’s there to be asking the questions the reader would ask and to provide clues which he does not recognize as such.
and beer and food.
Archie’s was females, it would almost get him killed on occasion.
I wanted to mention Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin from the *Master and Commander *series as an example of this trope. They are a particularly interesting pair because each is hyper-competent in their own field and incompetent in their partner’s, so each one takes a turn as the reader stand-in.
They don’t fight crime, though.
Wendell Urth and H. Seaton Davenport from Isaac Asimov’s “Wendell Urth” stories. Urth is an agoraphobe who never leaves his apartment. Davenport is actually a competent cop and manages to solve one of the mysteries without Urth being involved.
Shawn and Gus on Psych. The brilliant unconventional detective who is addicted to Eighties pop cultural references, and his medical-supplies sidekick who can distract the police, comfort victims, and act like a grownup when necessary.
No to both; the junior partner is more of a protege or naif, which is a different kind of audience stand-in.
Batman makes a good Holmes; someone has got to have paired him with a Watson at some point in the thousands of stories that have been told over the years, but I don’t know who. Alfred, maybe?
In comics, there’s Rorschach and Nite Owl. Entertainingly enough, Rorschach, the unconventional brilliant one, is barking up the wrong tree the whole time until Nite Owl cracks the case.
R. Daneil Olivar & Elijah Baily.
Lord Peter Wimsey and Charles Parker are a detective/detective pair, and Parker’s not the narrator, but he’s definitely the solid counterpart to Wimsey’s eccentric brilliance.
Wimsey suffers from WWI-induced PTSD, but I don’t know that you could call him “addicted” to anything. Music? First editions?
The professions are different, but I always thought Henry Higgins (irascible genius) & Colonel Pickering (more gentlemanly & recently returned from The East) were a similar pair of confirmed bachelor housemates in old London…
A number of team-ups with Superman pretty much went the way the OP described.