Young Sherlock

The Burden of the Deerstalker

I am starting to think Arthur Conan Doyle's detective is less a character and more a rite of passage for British actors. We have seen Holmes as a junkie, an action star, an octogenarian beekeeper, and a hyper-verbal sociopath. So when I heard Prime Video was delivering *Young Sherlock*, an eight-episode origin story dropping this March, my immediate reaction was a quiet, internal groan. Do we really need to know what the guy was like at nineteen? Yet against my better judgment, I could not look away. Showrunner Matthew Parkhill takes Andrew Lane's young adult novels and strips them down to something tactile and surprisingly bruised.



Here, Sherlock is not yet the unassailable genius of 221B Baker Street. He is a disgraced, unfiltered teenager stuck working as an Oxford university porter thanks to his stiff older brother, Mycroft. Hero Fiennes Tiffin plays him with a slumping, arrogant posture that betrays a deep well of insecurity. It is a profoundly physical performance. (Watch how his hands practically vibrate with excess energy when he cannot solve a puzzle.) He does not glide through rooms; he stumbles, gets punched in the face, and bleeds. Fiennes Tiffin, usually relegated to brooding teen-idol fare in the *After* movies, finally has material that demands he be ugly and frantic. And the casting of his real-life uncle, Joseph Fiennes, as his adventurous father Silas, adds a strange, lived-in friction to their familial scenes.



The real trick of the series, though, is the central relationship. Parkhill completely upends the traditional lore by making Sherlock's eventual arch-nemesis, James Moriarty (Dónal Finn), his best friend. It is a massive gamble. Yet, it works because Finn plays Moriarty not as a budding sociopath, but as a charming, slightly overly-pragmatic equal. There is a scene early on in the Oxford library where Sherlock, clutching a massive clock, tries to unravel the core murder mystery while wedged physically and ideologically between Moriarty and Mycroft (Max Irons). The camera pans tightly between their faces, capturing a messy, collegiate camaraderie. You know they are doomed to hate each other. They don't know it yet. That dramatic irony makes their "Butch and Sundance" dynamic genuinely tragic.



I am not entirely sure the whole thing holds together, though. Guy Ritchie executive produces and directs the first two episodes, lending the premiere his signature kinetic, smash-mouth swagger. Yet by the middle of the season, the globe-trotting conspiracy starts to feel a bit weightless. The second act loses its footing when the dialogue starts explaining what the camera already shows. The Guardian's Phil Harrison accurately described it as having a "generic but rakish charm," and I think that hits it exactly right. It is fun, but sometimes it trades emotional resonance for another stylized fistfight. Even so, as a portrait of a clever mind just figuring out how to insulate itself from the world, it lingers. I expected a cash grab. I got a kid just trying to survive his own brain.