Guy Ritchie has made a brand new TV collection about Sherlock Holmes and the lengthy and the wanting it’s … hmm. But first, some questions. Does the eight-part mystery-drama embody scenes during which flippant younger males in flat caps shout “Oi” whereas hurtling by means of the air in gradual movement? It does. Are there naked knuckle biff-ups throughout which bulbous cockneys cheer on different bulbous cockneys and Irish people music diddles frantically within the background? There are. Might there even be bits the place all the things abruptly goes actually quick for no purpose, effortful banter between bruisers in tweed trousers, blundering rozzers and the sense that whereas feminine characters are welcome to contribute to the plot, they’re very a lot excluded from being any kind of enjoyable?
Well, duh. Or fairly, strike a light-weight an’ cor blimey, guv’nor, you’ve bought this Guy Ritchie geezer bang to rights. For right here is Young Sherlock, a really massive and really loud new collection for Prime Video that was “executive produced and directed by the man who made Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, then that one with Brad Pitt, then some other films that weren’t either of those ones apparently” written by means of it like a stick of bleedin’ rock.
So off we whoosh to Oxford (residence to “arguably the greatest university in the world!”), the place smirking younger pickpocket Sherlock Holmes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) has been compelled by smart older brother Mycroft (Max Irons) to earn his preserve as a porter. “I will be keeping an eye on you,” he warns, as Holmes Jr huffs round in his interval drama apron. And he does. But not properly sufficient to cease the enormously eyebrowed recidivist from turning into embroiled in his first case: a sprawling, Tintinesque affair involving lethal weaponry, historic manuscripts, worldwide espionage and long-buried household secrets and techniques that may rock the institution to its brogues, by jove.
But first, there may be some tomfoolery to have interaction in with irascible new BFF James Moriarty (a magnificently assured flip from Dónal Finn). “Welcome to my overactive imagination!” bellows Holmes, mid-scrap, as outraged poshos scatter like bowling pins and faculty bigwig Sir Bucephalus Hodge (a marvellously weary Colin Firth) will get his mutton chops in a twist.
But wait. Who is the princess (Zine Tseng) who has arrived at Oxford with a mysterious and eminently pinchable fifth-century scroll? And who’s trying to off The Four Apostles? An enigmatic clutch of boffins beforehand concerned in a clandestine authorities mission in rural China?
Detectable among the many ensuing blizzard of fists and query marks are shadowy double brokers, Holmes’ grief-stricken mom (Natascha McElhone) and a fairly extraordinary variety of assertion moustaches. (You could, like me, end up fantasising about knitting them right into a stepladder with which to flee from traces similar to: “My name is Esad Kasgarli. I am from Constantinople.”)
Ritchie has been right here earlier than, with 2011’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (the intelligent and larksome sequel to 2009’s neither-of-those-things Sherlock Holmes), a comic-book romp with an aesthetic that one is contractually obliged to explain as “faintly steampunk”. Young Sherlock – which is predicated on Andrew Lane’s Young Sherlock Holmes ebook collection – has a close to similar power. But what felt contemporary in 2011 feels much less so in 2026.
And then there may be poor Fiennes Tiffin as Holmes. His presence is, because the fictional sleuth himself may need stated, a three-pipe drawback. Was it the eyebrows that swayed producers? Or was Asda doing a Bogof on Fienneses in casting week and so they’d run out of Ralphs? (Fiennes Tiffin’s uncle Joseph is on humourless patrician duties as Sherlock’s ageing father.)
This explicit Holmes is much less “most brilliant crime-solver in Christendom” and extra “self-conscious waiter in mid-range restaurant who addresses diners as ‘you guys’ while doing finger-guns at the prawns”. It doesn’t assist that Fiennes Tiffin has been teamed with the explosively charismatic Finn, whose presence right here reduces everybody inside the blast zone to a smoking hillock of moustache.
Still. The Tintinny stuff is a hoot and Firth is a blustery pleasure. And there’s a breeziness to all of the capering that ensures even at its most geezerish, that is one Guy Ritchie joint wot ain’t solely pony.
