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Our pop culture simply can’t get enough of Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s great detective has featured in over 250 film and television adaptations and been played by notable actors ranging from Jeremy Brett and Christopher Lee to Robert Downey, Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch. It’s difficult to find a new angle to tackle such familiar and well-trod material, let alone one that hasn’t been done before (and likely better) by some previous adaptation. Yet, somehow, the sheer volume of Holmes in everything from films and TV shows to radio dramas, stage plays, and even video games means that, at this point, almost anything goes, an attitude that Prime Video’s Young Sherlock fully embraces from its opening moments.
The series hails from director Guy Ritchie, who helms its first two episodes and who casts a long shadow over the entire production. He has spent a fair amount of time playing with Conan Doyle’s toys already and if this eight-part series isn’t the third installment in his Sherlock Holmes feature film franchise that we all probably wish it was, it’s still a remarkably similar substitute. It is (extremely loosely) inspired by Andrew Lane’s series of YA novels, but includes none of their actual plot. It features characters from classic literature who bear little real resemblance to their on-page counterparts as we know them, but who are comprised of recognizable enough archetypes to feel familiar. The show seems as though it ought to be a prequel to Richie’s larger Holmes film universe, but it isn’t. And somehow all these disparate pieces combine to form something that is…a surprisingly good time?
Dripping with plenty of Ritchie’s favorite aesthetic tics — slow motion fight scenes, elaborately staged chase sequences, tastefully dressed Victorian men with impressive mutton chops — Young Sherlock is as much about the vibes as it is about its story. And, as a result, the show is actually a lot of fun. Its propulsive pace and seemingly endless string of increasingly wild plot twists keep things moving quickly enough so that you’ll never get bored (or think all that hard about what you’re watching). The banter is top-notch, the cast is gamely committed to the bit, and its brash, youthful attitude meshes perfectly with Ritchie’s go-for-broke storytelling style. No, this is not a particularly faithful adaptation, either of Holmes as a character or any of Conan Doyle’s stories. But the show is self-aware enough to know that, winking at its source material even as it barrels straight past it and dares you to complain about having a good time.
Young Sherlock is, as its name implies, an origin story. It follows a 19-year-old Sherlock (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), forced to work as a servant at Oxford University as punishment for a recent jail stint. According to his brother Mycroft (Max Irons), the experience is meant to teach the young man some much-needed humility — his jail sentence was less for theft and more for showing off in front of the judge — but, instead, it sees him almost immediately embroiled in a murder investigation where he himself is a primary suspect. His attempts to prove his innocence ultimately see him dragged into a much larger conspiracy, one that spans several continents and even touches on his own tragic family history. Along the way, Holmes meets a scholarship student named James Moriarty (Dónal Finn), who’s determined to help him clear his name, as well as a mysterious Chinese princess (Zine Tseng) with plenty of secrets of her own.
The series doesn’t offer a particularly deep take on Holmes as a character, preferring to wink at the audience via plenty of references about the man he’s destined to become rather than lay any real groundwork for how the undisciplined, immature boy we meet in these episodes will manage to pull such a transformation off. But, hey, a deerstalker definitely makes an appearance! The show also makes liberal use of the idea of Sherlock’s infamous mind palace as a deductive tactic, and a handful of famous lines from Conan Doyle’s original works are peppered throughout.
But Young Sherlock’s most interesting trick is the way it reinvents the idea of Holmes and Moriarty’s relationship, casting them as youthful besties in a way that both foreshadows Sherlock’s future bond with John Watson and adds an air of inevitable tragedy to almost every scene the two share in the present day. The idea of a prequel in which two future archenemies are revealed to have once been close friends isn’t exactly new in our modern-day television landscape. Still, Young Sherlock going there with Holmes and Moriarty, two of literature’s most famous enemies, actually manages to feel fresh, and their dynamic is undoubtedly the series’ strongest element.
Unlike poor Watson, Moriarty is clearly portrayed as Holmes’s intellectual equal, and the two share the investigative workload from the start, hatching mad schemes and theories together in ways that highlight how truly similar they both are. Yet James’ background as a working-class orphan who’s had to scramble for his opportunities and is constantly threatened with losing his scholarship sits in sharp contrast to Sherlock’s, who comes from a well-off family and has a powerful older brother whose entire existence seems to be dedicated to getting him out of trouble. It’s when Young Sherlock sits in these differences that it’s at its most compelling, as they’re clearly the root from which their diverging moral codes and priorities will one day spring.
Fiennes Tiffin makes for a serviceable if not particularly memorable Holmes. Boyish and intelligent but without the cruelty that can so often go hand in hand with Sherlock’s genius, he’s an easy character to like, even if he suffers from fairly inconsistent characterization over the course of this first season. Instead, it’s Finn who steals the show, crafting a Moriarty who is charismatic, cunning, and gregariously charming in a way that frequently overshadows his BFF whose name happens to be in the series’ title. The supporting cast is stacked, from Colin Firth’s turn as the pompous Sir Bucephalus Hodge to Natascha McElhone and Joseph Fiennes as Sherlock’s mentally ill mother and absentee father, respectively.
As the season rockets toward a conclusion that upends most of what young Holmes was given to understand about his life, things escalate in ways that are, honestly, fairly ridiculous if you look too closely at them. (Or if you happen to be a Conan Doyle purist of any stripe.) But as the elaborate set pieces and witty quips pile up, you’ll probably be having too much fun to care.
All eight episodes of Young Sherlock are available to stream on Prime Video now.
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