It's funny you should talk about the most 'visible writer' because Mark Gatiss, co-creater and writer is Mycroft
I think Moffat gets too much attention when it comes to Sherlock. Each writer only writes an episode each and the spectrum of good episodes is all over the place. From interviews it's clear this was as much Gatiss' idea as Moffat's. All the nods to the audience in the first episode of series 3 were basically because Gatiss had realised that with all this hype and speculation the actual unveiling of the answer was going to seem pretty dull.
In terms of quality it's pretty well spread between them. The Great Game was written by Gatiss, the Reichenbach Fall by Steve Thompson, a Study in Pink by Moffat and then naturally they all did one each of series 3 which was consistently great
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Bitter medicine
This is less a Sherlock review than a Moffat review. I say this because he is the most 'visible' writer/producer I've ever seen. He pulls the rug out from expectations, he trolls the audience, he uses transparent self-inserts, constantly pointing out and giggling at narrative logic we take for granted. Consequently, he can be confrontational with the bovine temperament of the average viewer. (I include myself in that category.) Plainly, he identifies with the cleverer characters in the room, even Mycroft. ("I live in a world of goldfish" anyone?)
Anyway. Being as Sherlock is as much about television as it is about a done-to-death character like Holmes, there's a good deal of audience surrogate characters, like the sad fan haters of The Empty Hearse, or Mrs. "I Ship Swatson" Hudson. Phil Sandifer also pointed out that Sherlock/John/Mary are a kind of poly couple, this being one of the last barriers TV has left to cross. Finally, the mysteries themselves are an afterthought to Moffat's trademark flirty banter. Most everyone is brilliant and witty and wants to fuck.
I'd love to live in Sherlock's world but watching it isn't always the most interesting thing. I think Moffat has a real impatience with pretending that his Triple-A, billion dollar commercial superheroes could possibly lose. He'll have none of it. Consequently, watching Doctor Who and (particularly) Sherlock is more like attending a seminar on fiction writing. The thought-provoking twists come from the reversals in writing, not some criminal plot.