Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Personal and maybe unpopular opinion incoming: the fictional family-thriller Enola Holmes 2 was a lot more entertaining than Guy Ritchie’s mini-series ‘Young Sherlock’. The 2025 show imagines the legendary detective created by Arthur Conan Doyle as a 19-year-old man.
Episode one introduces a young Sherlock Holmes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), who is in prison for theft until his older brother Mycroft Holmes (Max Irons) bails him out and secures him a place at Oxford, though not as a student. At Oxford, Sherlock quickly becomes the prime suspect in a professor’s murder. More mess for Mycroft to clean up.
Sherlock teams up with new friend James Moriarty (Dónal Finn) to find the real killer. However, their investigation pulls them deeper into a high-stakes conspiracy targeting academics connected to a mysterious project. Their only lead is Princess Gulun Shou’an (Zine Tseng), a Chinese student at Oxford who appears to have framed the budding detective and has too many secrets. Although the snobby Oxford dean Bucephalus Hodge (Colin Firth in a lamentably short part) seems suspicious too.
In a series of contrived twists, the second half of ‘Young Sherlock’ leans into family drama, with Sherlock’s mother, Cordelia Holmes (Natascha McElhone), appearing to be tied to the case. Struggling with the loss of her daughter, she is sent to a mental institution by her husband, Silas (Joseph Fiennes). Meanwhile, Sherlock starts seeing visions of a young woman and begins digging into his sister’s death.
Hero Fiennes Tiffin as the titular young Sherlock is quite charming and likable, but the show simply doesn’t have the style, substance, or even the comical wit you’d expect from a story like this. Guy Ritchie’s mini-series ‘The Gentlemen’ was a lot more entertaining and funny. Hero has an easy chemistry with all the characters on show, especially with his real-life uncle Joseph Fiennes who plays his onscreen father Silas.
Unfortunately, Dónal Finn’s turn as James Moriarty never really landed for me. Given Moriarty’s reputation as a criminal mastermind, perhaps one expects a devious, or magnetic presence from the character, which Finn doesn’t display. Zine Tseng as Princess Shou’an gets to plays the most intriguing character in the series – she is clever, mysterious, and can fight like a warrior when needed.
I started streaming ‘Young Sherlock’ on a weekend afternoon when a bunch of family members were around, hoping it would be a fun watch for all of us. We were five at the start, three drifted off to do their own thing, the fourth fell asleep on the couch, and yours truly was the only one who made it to about episode three. After that, I decided to finish the series on my own… and then completely forgot about it for three days until a friend mentioned it.
“It’s okay, but we started watching the older Sherlock movie with Robert Downey Jr.” she told me. She hadn’t finished watching “Young Sherlock” either and then went on to praise the one with Benedict Cumberbatch instead, even though she chose to revisit the Robert Downey one (which btw is directed by Guy Ritchie too).
Just like Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock was solving cases with the future of the British Empire at stake, even Hero’s Sherlock lands on a massive case. Why? Directors really need to chill with the “save the world” obsession, thrillers don’t always need apocalypse-level stakes to work. With a title like ‘Young Sherlock’, I expected scrappy little cases and baby detective energy, not a full-blown globe-trotting conspiracy that feels way too big to be believable.
Anyway… overall, “Young Sherlock” is a decent one-time watch, with lots of deaths, drama, action, and twists, even if some of them feel forced.
Watch ‘Young Sherlock’ on Prime Video.
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