Young Sherlock

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.