In 1887, 'A Study in Scarlet' introduced the world to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Although the character is nearly 140 years old, Young Sherlock takes us back to his youthful years. In the books by Conan Doyle, very little is revealed about Sherlock Holmes' youth. Young Sherlock is therefore not based on those books. Between 2010 and 2015, eight books were written by Andrew Lane (with permission from the Conan Doyle Estate) about the young Sherlock Holmes, in which Lane tried to stay as true to the source material as possible, while at the same time making the most of the freedom given since little was known about his youth.
The series Young Sherlock, from the creative mind of Guy Ritchie (who was also responsible for the 2009 and 2011 films in which Robert Downey Jr. played the role of the adult Sherlock Holmes), is in turn loosely based on Lane's books.
In the first episode of Young Sherlock, we see Sherlock Holmes, played by Hero Fiennes Tiffin, being taken out of prison by his brother Mycroft (Max Irons). Wanting to keep a closer eye on Sherlock and help him get his life back on track, Mycroft takes Sherlock to the University of Oxford. Not so that Sherlock can continue his quest for knowledge there, but to have him work as a servant. Given the nature of the nineteen-year-old Sherlock, it probably surprises no one that he quickly corrects the professor during math lessons and solves his equations.
At Oxford, Holmes meets the student James Moriarty, played by Dónal Finn, and they immediately hit it off. However, they don't always bring out the best in each other, and soon they find themselves in trouble when accused of stealing something valuable from Princess Gulun Shou’an (Zine Tseng). The princess, however, is not convinced of Sherlock's guilt and trusts more in Sherlock's ability to solve the theft than in Constable Lestrade (Scott Reid). The question is whether Sherlock will manage to get out of trouble because of this or get into even deeper trouble.
The first episode of Young Sherlock does what it needs to do. Without blowing me away, the various storylines set up in the first episode make me curious about how it will continue. There is also plenty of enjoyable action and dry humor in the first episode that I can appreciate.
Although many elements from Conan Doyle's stories are present, it's clear that the young Sherlock is noticeably different from what we are used to from the original books, which doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing.
The synergy between Fiennes Tiffin and Finn is present, although I found in the first episode that the Moriarty played by Finn somewhat overshadows Holmes. I hope this is balanced out more in the rest of the first season.
About the writer, Karzal
Mike (1995) has been a member of MySeries since 2016 and is mainly active on the English version of the site. Since 2018, he has been actively translating news articles, columns, reviews and basically everything that ends up on the Dutch site. The original articles, columns and reviews were actually written by others. During the week Mike can be found at IKEA, where he is a national systems specialist and occasionally also in the classroom to teach an English lesson. In addition, Mike logically enjoys watching series and has actually been spoon-fed this from an early age. The genre doesn't matter, there is a place for everything in the otherwise busy life.
