Young Sherlock — Guy Ritchie’s return to Doyle has style but thin script

Review by C.J. Bunce

Joining the shelves of new novels at your local bookstore, TV has been inundated with Sherlock Holmes series since the character entered the public domain. This year the guy responsible for the two biggest Sherlock Holmes movies (2009’s Sherlock Holmes and 2011’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) returned to the sleuth and his sidekick for a prequel, 138 years after he first appeared. Guy Ritchie’s new series Young Sherlock, streaming now on Prime Video, is certainly in the realm of unoriginal ideas. More pastiches of Arthur Doyle’s hero have been created than for any other character. But Ritchie reliably makes his shows stylish and fun. Unfortunately–even with a top-notch cast–Ritchie’s brand of style and music is all you’ll find in this look at Sherlock Holmes before he joined up with John Watson.

On the heels of a similar effort, Sherlock and Daughter (reviewed here at borg), which starred David Thewlis as the perfect, traditional Holmes, Young Sherlock really should be called The Holmes Family, because that’s really what its eight hour-long season is about. Young Sherlock stars Harry Potter’s Tom Riddle actor Hero Fiennes Tiffin as Holmes, uncle Joseph Fiennes as his dad Silas, The Truman Show’s Natascha McElhone as his mom, Max Irons (Tutankhamun) as brother Mycroft, and Holly Cattle (Cobra) who may or may not be his long-lost sister Beatrice. But they aren’t the most interesting part of the show.

It’s the underlying story that is underwhelming. Guy Ritchie chose Andrew Lane’s Young Sherlock Holmes young adult books to adapt, and the lean toward a younger audience is evident in the script and dialogue. So this doesn’t play well as a prequel to Ritchie’s movies, which starred Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law. It shows through in the faces of the actors as they recite their lines that the dialogue is clunky and amateurish, certainly not up to the brilliance readers know of Holmes stories. It’s difficult to see this Holmes growing up to be the detecting wizard of 221B Baker Street, especially introducing parents and a sister with sociopathic and/or psychological issues. Instead of focusing on the mystery of the season the story focuses on what’s wrong with Sherlock’s family, with little to reveal of how that may have molded or informed the later Sherlock. The choice of this story for Ritchie is just odd.

If you’ve read the original Doyle stories, you know they are all about Holmes and Watson and the untwisting of the mystery. Mycroft Holmes is only a minor player in two stories, with Moriarty as a featured player in only one story. The family is nonexistent. As authors and screenplay writers adapted Holmes and Watson over more than a century, they apparently ran out of new ideas, returning to make Mycroft and Moriarty something bigger than Doyle intended. Every new version tries to reinvent Moriarty, and every effort struggles with offering up anything more than a one-note villain. As for Mycroft, the best take yet was BBC’s Sherlock’s Mark Gatiss. He made it work because he’s a great writer and actor and he wrote his own dialogue as scriptwriter and showrunner.

Both Hero Fiennes Tiffin brings some fun energy to his Sherlock, and Max Irons is a believable straight arrow as Mycroft. But it’s Dónal Finn who makes Moriarty his own, probably creating the most interesting–and certainly the most fun– Moriarty to date. Tiffin and Finn could have made the series a great buddy cop caper had the script left the duo front and center trying to figure out who is killing notable Oxford professors. At one point the buddy team-up made me think Ritchie might be able to pull off a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid prequel. It’s the family plot that sidetracks what otherwise feels like a good Ritchie action movie with potential to be something great.

Two supporting players also are worth mentioning. That’s Colin Firth as Bucephalus Hodge, another meaty role for the Academy Award-winning actor, and Zine Tseng, who may or may not be a princess from China who comes to England to seek vengeance against some colonial types who destroyed her family and village. Along with Tiffin and Finn, Firth and Tseng have charisma and a certain zest that will keep viewers coming back for the next episode despite the thin story. But Tseng’s storyline gets garbled into the family plot, too. It’s a shame. The opening scenes hinted at something on par with the much better take on an Asian woman in historical Great Britain, the action film Tornado (reviewed here at borg).

Ritchie’s production, normally more precise and better at getting the sets and costumes historically accurate, fudges here in several places, including incorporating modern dialogue and phrases that simply didn’t exist in the 19th century, issues that also plagued the similar-vibed Enola Holmes. Some costumes are historically wrong or worn wrong for the era. The standout behind the scenes is composer Christopher Benstead, Ritchie’s frequent choice composer, who brings all the excitement and energy to the series.

This one just isn’t up to Ritchie’s normal high standards. Ritchie has earned his right to grab our attention with each new project, delivering one of TV’s best series: The Gentlemen, and returning last year with MobLand, after his success with the movie version of The Gentlemen, a slew of Jason Statham movies, one of cinema’s under-rated reboots: The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and the best live-action version of an animated Disney movie: 2019’s Aladdin.

Mostly fun, just capable of offering more, the first season of Young Sherlock is now streaming on Prime Video. The series has not been renewed for a second season. If you want to see classic literature as modern action series done better, check out our review of The Artful Dodger here.

Catch up with our reviews of other quality British TV series (including Australian and New Zealand shows you’d find on PBS, BritBox, or Acorn TV) beginning with our Top 10: Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes, Zen, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, Mr. Selfridge, Guilt, The IPCRESS File, The Hour, The Gentlemen, Black Doves, and Shetland. You could stay pretty busy with our full list of top British TV recommendations, including Deadloch, The Artful Dodger, Van Der Valk, the first season of Sherlock, Troppo, Case Histories, This is Going to Hurt, Black Snow, Mystery Road: Origin, Death Valley, Dept. Q, Bodkin, The Bletchley Circle, Good Cop/Bad Cop, Grace, Steeltown Murders, Hinterland, Glitch, Mystery Road, Culprits, Harrow, Annika, Young Sherlock lands here, The Day of the Jackal, Code of Silence, Luther, Professor T, and Supacell.

After you’ve seen all of those, try Viva Blackpool, Marchlands, Lightfields, State of Play, I, Jack Wright, Population 11, Protection, After the Flood, Traces, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Scrublands, Ordeal by Innocence, Unforgotten, The Bay, Wild Bill, Quirke, Requiem, The Gloaming, The Clearing, The One, The Tourist, The Tower, Collateral, Roadkill, Stay Close, The Salisbury Poisonings, and A Confession.

Other British series across genres that are worth checking out (a few still to be reviewed here) include fun romps like Monarch of the Glen, Para Handy, Cranford, Viva Blackpool, and As Time Goes By, and cozy mysteries Rosemary and Thyme, Father Brown, Hetty Wainthropp, and Death in Paradise. One of the best of all British productions is the reboot of All Creatures Great and Small, which is in our British Top 10 (and the original is good, too). Of course there’s always Doctor Who for your sci-fi fix (and spin-offs Torchwood and Class), The Watch for your fantasy fix, Truth Seekers and Sea of Souls for your supernatural fix, and Spaced for more sci-fi fun, and we really should add House, MD, for Brit lead Hugh Laurie’s one-of-a-kind performance. (We’ve also reviewed but don’t heartily recommend so much Dublin Murders, The ABC Murders, The Pale Horse, Reef Break, The One That Got Away, The Silence, The Five, The Missing, Thirteen, or Broadchurch, as well as No Offence, which could have merited a review for its first season but, like Sherlock, its later episodes were a disappointment).