This is a non-spoiler review for all eight episodes of Young Sherlock’s first season, which launches on March 4 on Amazon Prime Video.
Guy Ritchie, who brought his witty high-kinetic energy to two very entertaining Sherlock Holmes movies starring Robert Downey Jr., is back in the Sherlock saddle with Prime Video’s caper-riffic Young Sherlock as executive producer and director. Despite wasting its episodic energies on a full season-long mystery and short-sheeting the Sherlock character a bit in the process, Young Sherlock is rambunctious fun that works well as a “Team Sherlock” adventure, bringing together a bunch of crafty, capable characters to save the world from a Victorian-era weapon of mass destruction. It may not feel like a traditional Sherlock Holmes mystery, but it does occasionally feel like Leverage with a sprinkle of Indiana Jones…and that’s not a bad thing.
Serving as an origin story for the “World’s Greatest Detective,” Young Sherlock centers on a 19-year-old Sherlock Holmes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), presenting a unique, separate version of him that’s not connected to Ritchie’s RDJ films. This novice Sherlock also comes with newly-conceived family members (mom, pop, sister) and a surprising fast-friends team-up with one James Moriarty (Dónal Finn). Finn’s Moriarty actually winds up being the freshest and most riveting part of the series, despite the concept of Sherlock being BFFs with his future nemesis in a quasi Professor X/Magneto way understandably eliciting some eye rolls. But more on that in a bit.
This isn’t the first time the exploits of younger, teenage Sherlock have been explored, but it’s rare for them to wind up on screen. The last time that happened, in fact, was a movie produced by Steven Spielberg and penned by Chris Columbus over 40 years ago, and it imagined Holmes and Watson meeting at boarding school (with Moriarty being one of the teachers). Young Sherlock is supposedly adapted from the Andrew Lane book series, though the fact that Sherlock is a different age than he is in those books, and the fact that this is an original story written for the screen, seems to suggest more of a wispy “inspired by” connection.
Ritchie and showrunner Matthew Parkhill could have gone the Holmes/Watson route again, but decided to present us with a Sherlock who – in a humbling twist – is occasionally not the smartest person in the room. Some hallmarks are there, though; he’s headstrong, directionless, and acts as a perpetual pin prick to stable older brother Mycroft (Max Irons), but he’s bad at fighting and his powers of deduction are at an elementary level. Young Sherlock presents our hero with a band of allies who help him sharpen his instincts and hone his fisticuffs, while the big overarching mystery acts as a close-to-home trial by fire that begins to forge Sherlock into future Holmes.
The story starts with Mycroft, who’s been forced to take responsibility for Sherlock in the absence of their father, the perpetually-away Silas (Joseph Fiennes), and their institutionalized mother, Cordelia (Natascha McElhone). Mycroft springs Sherlock from jail and gets him a gig as a servant at Oxford, which is the first twist on tradition, since Sherlock is a self-taught nomad and not a brilliant student. The childhood death of their sister, Beatrice, looms like a shadow over their sibling squabbles, as the incident not only placed Cordelia in a mental hospital, but also sent Sherlock into a life of flippant rebelliousness after he was blamed by Silas for his sister’s demise.
After a bit of Good Will Holmes-ing at Oxford, a James Moriarty meet-cute, and a plot to assassinate certain professors is revealed, we’re off to the races. I won’t dig into the vast conspiracy that gets cracked wide open in order to remain spoiler-free, but it’s very much a Guy Ritchie-style conceit. In fact, even though Young Sherlock is set in a different Holmes-ian universe than 2011’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, they share the grandeur of new science merging with world-changing weaponry and war profiteering. The villain acts as a proto-Moriarty, while young Moriarty himself acts as a proto-Watson, though with a few more devilish bells and whistles.
Young Sherlock’s spin on the future detective’s powers of deduction is his ability to call upon a mind palace of recollection, which can place him inside the memory of whatever he’s examining. It’s a version of the way RDJ is able to mentally predict fights and probabilities of success in the Ritchie movies, but used here more for crime scene analysis. It’s a cool part of the premise that helps separate Sherlock from the rest of his cohorts, and Tiffin is formidable as this green version of Sherlock, but it’s James Moriarty that runs off with the show. He’s vulnerable, mysterious, and mischievous all at once. We don’t get much insight into his backstory, except that he doesn’t come from money and seems to envy/admire Sherlock’s family, as f***ed up as they are. It’s as if he’d give anything to be a part of something…even if that thing was broken.
Moriarty becomes the driving force for a lot of the show, and he’s the one who gets Sherlock into fighting shape; he even gets to introduce the “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains…” line. He’s basically a ride-or-die pal like Jeremy Renner in The Town, who helps Ben Affleck with no questions asked (“Whose car we gonna take?”). The show takes good care of this relationship too, never steamrolling us right into dumb “they’re enemies now!” territory. The rest of the cast is up to snuff as well, with Fiennes shining as a narcissist and McElhone having a nice arc as a woman reclaiming her life and family. Zine Tseng, as a Chinese princess attending Oxford, is a wonderful Irene Adler-style wild card operating mostly on her own agenda but also deeply connected to all the goings-on. Oh, and if you’re keen on seeing Colin Firth as a sketchy blustering fool, then Young Sherlock’s got you covered.
There’s some anachronistic dialogue here and there – “Game recognizes game,” etc. – and most of the time it doesn’t necessarily feel like a Sherlock Holmes story, per se, but Young Sherlock’s jazzed-up action and high-stakes, globetrotting, Tintin-esque escapades make for an entertaining distraction and an enjoyable new entry into the What if…? world of Holmes.
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