Young Sherlock

The show turns Victorian England on its head, infusing it with modern energy while offering an intricate mystery anchored by singular characters and extraordinary circumstances.

This is a grand adventure and cracking good mystery awash with gaslighting, brawls, murders, red herrings and a secret society. Better yet, it provides a better understanding of how the past and Sherlock’s dysfunctional parents (played by Natasha McElhone and Joseph Fiennes — Hero’s actual uncle) and his ardently disappointed brother Mycroft (Max Irons) ushered in Sherlock’s anxiety and neuroses.

While Young Sherlock is certainly stylish, it doesn’t forsake substance for that style, setting up Sherlock Holmes’ first big case in a way that digs into the characters of Sherlock, Moriarty and others that are familiar to Holmes fans.

It’s pulpy and nutty and preposterous, mostly in a good way. .... All eight episodes premiere at once, the better to binge them, and having stayed up until 2 a.m. doing just that, I can tell you it’s not hard, and hard not to do.

Though it's far from the most loyal adaptation, what Young Sherlock lacks in accuracy to the source material, it makes up for in pure entertainment. It's not fancy or pretentious; it's just having fun and takes you on the ride with it.

Devilishly clever things are afoot in this YA origin story as Mr. Holmes (a dashing Hero Fiennes Tiffin) rethinks his juvenile antics as a rebel hothead at Oxford and starts reinventing himself as the world’s greatest detective.

The "eight-hour movie" aspect of this season is regrettable, and Sherlock himself often gets lost in the shuffle of what's basically an ensemble adventure, but Young Sherlock has good chemistry, energy, and synergy.

Label this one a streaming page-turner, not quite up to a cliff-hanger, episode by episode, just engrossing enough to keep us engaged.

It doesn’t help that Fiennes Tiffin has been teamed with the explosively charismatic Finn, whose presence here reduces everyone within the blast zone to a smoking hillock of moustache. Still. The Tintinny stuff is a hoot and Firth is a blustery joy. And there’s a breeziness to all the capering that ensures even at its most geezerish, this is one Guy Ritchie joint wot ain’t entirely pony.

Being Ritchie, all this rollicks along, high on its own reimagining — and hats off to the natty suits — but at eight episodes it’s somewhat overstuffed. Things are so much more compelling in the smaller moments.

“Young Sherlock” is fun enough, though for reasons visual rather than strictly narrative.

“Young Sherlock” is a fun ride, and it does some interesting things with its source material. By trying to become a blockbuster-sized globetrotting adventure, however, it loses focus and steam.

All that being said - the messiness, the weak characterisation, the lack of fidelity to the source material - it has to acknowledged that Young Sherlock is not a slog to get through. .... Young Sherlock is a proper rollicking adventure, with a sense of fun that prevails even as more brooding elements descend.

Like The Rings of Power, it lacks the star power of its predecessor and often feels like a retread. It's hard to get invested in a show with this little creative personality, resting on the laurels of the Holmes brand instead of establishing a vision of its own.

The evidence points less to a must-watch new Holmes chapter than to a handful of performers worth tracking from here. Unless you’re a casting agent, or a truly die-hard Sherlock Holmes completist determined to inspect every clue in the canon, there isn’t an especially convincing reason to open this case file.

While the other characters in the series talk a lot about how smart Sherlock is, Ritchie hasn’t got the patience or confidence to persuasively demonstrate this. What the script lacks in procedural credibility, the direction makes up for in an almost desperate speed. .... We know Sherlock and Moriarty will one day end up as archenemies. But, for now, neither young man is engaging enough to make you care how, and no amount of fisticuffs can fix that.

The audience has to manage at least four different, weakly written subplots over the course of eight episodes, and the stories are shot to serve the action set-pieces, rather than the other way round. It does not help that the lead actors have not yet honed their talents well enough to expand the meager material, causing their performances to feel like impressions of the characters rather than fully realized portrayals.