‘Young Sherlock’ Review: Guy Ritchie’s Hyperactive Take on Holmes’ Early Years (Prime Video)
Our rebellious young detective and his unlikely ally Moriarty are framed for theft and murder at Oxford, sending them on the run through an increasingly elaborate international conspiracy.
In the long line of audiovisual adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic works, it makes sense to start with the most recent ones. Guy Ritchie, who directed the last two Sherlock Holmes films starring Robert Downey Jr., is now responsible for the first episodes—and much of the overall aesthetic—of Young Sherlock. The other obvious point of reference is the series of eight novels titled Young Sherlock Holmes by Andrew Lane. Purists, then, might argue that this show is not really an adaptation of Doyle but of Lane. In truth, that’s not quite accurate either: the credits merely say the series is “inspired” by those books, and the story takes a fair number of liberties along the way.
For starters, in the show created by Matthew Parkhill —though everyone will inevitably refer to it as “the Guy Ritchie series”—, Holmes isn’t 14 but 19. That seemingly minor adjustment shifts much of the premise and logic of the show. The characters have also been reshuffled. Most strikingly, Holmes’s future arch-enemy, James Moriarty, initially appears here as a colleague, friend and investigative sidekick.
Played by Hero Fiennes Tiffin—nephew of Ralph Fiennes and Joseph Fiennes, the latter popping up here as his father—the young Sherlock is less a budding gentleman detective than a cheerful pickpocket: a mischievous little thief who mostly steals for the thrill of it and usually gives the goods back afterwards. He also carries a childhood trauma and a complicated family history that will gradually come into focus as the episodes progress.
Sherlock spends a few months in prison for those petty thefts before his brother Mycroft Holmes—played by Max Irons—offers him a position as a porter at the University of Oxford. There he meets Moriarty, portrayed by Dónal Finn. The arrival of an exotic Asian princess named Gulun Shou’an (Zine Tseng) sets the mystery in motion. She brings with her a set of ancient scrolls that promptly go missing, and the formidable Sir Bucephalus Hodge—played with appropriate gravitas by Colin Firth—is convinced that Holmes and Moriarty are responsible. The discovery of a bomb only makes them look guiltier, and when a mysterious murder follows, things escalate quickly. Before long the pair are fleeing the authorities while trying to solve the very crimes they’ve been accused of, in a plot that becomes increasingly extravagant and international with each passing episode.
The show clearly taps into the recent revival of the murder-mystery format on screen—from the films of Rian Johnson to the seemingly endless parade of new adaptations of Agatha Christie. Holmes and Moriarty are thrown into a labyrinthine case that drags them around the world and into the company of ever more eccentric characters. The problem is that, in typical Guy Ritchie fashion, viewers are unlikely to linger long enough in any of those settings to properly take them in. The British director tends to film as if the entire production were competing in an Olympic sprint.
A small example says it all: while watching the first ninety seconds of the second episode, it honestly felt like the show was running a trailer-style recap of episode one. It wasn’t. The confusion stems from Ritchie’s editing style: the rapid-fire cutting, the way scenes crash into each other mid-conversation, and the abrupt jumps in location often give the sequences the breathless rhythm of a trailer. One character is still walking down a corridor while the dialogue from the next scene has already begun—and sometimes the one after that too. Either the man directs with the attention span of someone fuelled entirely by espresso shots, or he’s convinced that no viewer can tolerate more than ten seconds in the same room with the same people.
Beyond that hyperactive storytelling—apparently well suited to the streaming era—Young Sherlock does have its charms. Much of that comes from Dónal Finn’s lively Moriarty, who at least initially proves far more intriguing than either of the Holmes brothers, and from the enigmatic princess, whose martial-arts prowess and assorted tricks add a welcome dash of pulp adventure. Eventually the central mystery becomes almost comically convoluted, twisting itself into knots it didn’t really need. But by then that’s hardly the main issue.
Anyone willing to buy into the current trend of turning the dangerous cities of nineteenth-century England into something sleek and vaguely modern—a trend championed by creators like Steven Knight—will probably enjoy what Matthew Parkhill, Guy Ritchie and company are doing here. The spirit is not unlike the films Ritchie made with the same characters. Still, neither the actors nor the dialogue quite match the spark of those earlier adventures. Much like the teenage iterations of heroes such as James Bond or Indiana Jones, the idea is pleasant enough in theory—but rarely quite lives up to the legend.
