Young Sherlock Turns Heated Rivals Into Kick-Ass Partners

Are Sherlock Holmes fans picky about the canon? If you’re not a hardcore Sherlockian (or Holmesian), you might be surprised at the wide variety of different takes on Sherlock and how nearly all these versions are widely embraced by the fans. One can love Nicholas Meyer’s assertion in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution that Holmes never fought Moriarty at Reichenbach, or Nancy Springer’s take that Holmes and Mycroft had a secret sister named Enola. Hell, Benedict Cumberbatch’s 2010 Sherlock came right on the heels of Robert Downey Jr.’s steampunk Sherlock Holmes in 2009, and both are still beloved today. And now, director Guy Ritchie, who brought us that brawling Holmes in 2009, is back for more, with a mildly anachronistic take on the immortal detective: Young Sherlock.

Don’t let the name throw you off; the “young” part of this show simply means that Holmes is almost 20 years old, having a pint (or two) and making things up as he goes along. But the delight of Young Sherlock is that it contains everything we’ve come to love about the great detective, with a dash of something new.

Young Sherlock retains the Victorian setting of the classic early Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle but is decidedly earlier in the life of Sherlock Holmes. Instead of the 1881 setting of the first Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, the events of Young Sherlock take place in the 1870s, and chronicle Sherlock (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) as he’s sent to Oxford, not as a brilliant student but as a delinquent given menial labor chores. Quickly, he is befriended by a cocky student named James Moriarty (Dónal Finn), and the pair quickly fall into a partnership that involves working as ad hoc detectives, drinking in pubs, getting into scraps, and generally being the kind of duo that Holmesian pastiches don’t always depict: Holmes having adventures not with Watson but with someone who is his intellectual equal in every way. Whereas Holmes and Watson are a study in contrast as friends with different skill sets, Holmes and Moriarty are a different combination: fast friends who, at some point in the future, will become mortal enemies.

“Watson never met Moriarty,” Young Sherlock showrunner Matthew Parkhill tells Inverse. “So, here’s my theory: Sherlock never told Watson he’d met Moriarty. Why? Because he didn’t want to upset Watson, because, say, Watson isn’t exactly his intellectual equal. And Moriarty is. So for me, the theory was Holmes, later, was trying to replicate this incredible friendship he had and then he lost.”

That said, the charm of Young Sherlock is that at this point, James Moriarty isn’t the reclusive supervillain he becomes in the story The Final Problem, and Sherlock Holmes isn’t the aloof, cold reasoning machine from the majority of the canonical 56 short stories and four novels penned by Doyle. Instead, the bromance and buddy team-up vibe between Holmes and Moriarty is what makes Young Sherlock so charming and watchable. In some ways, the show should really be called “Holmes and Moriarty Down at the Pub.”

“There’s plenty of drinking, isn’t there?” Fiennes Tiffin jokes to Inverse. “I mean, we wanted these guys to be very relatable. I think they are not very relatable in Conan Doyle’s work — in a brilliant way. Because they’re so exceptional. I think anyone’s lying if they say they can relate to Sherlock or Moriarty on an intellectual level.”

Finn agrees, and he makes it clear that with his take on Moriarty, he wasn’t so much playing the origin of a supervillain, but instead crafting an almost entirely new character and, in a way, a second version of Holmes himself, because at this point, Moriarty is perhaps slightly ahead of Holmes. “They have a mutual admiration for each other. They stimulate new ideas off of each other. But this is also Guy Ritchie, so they’re also lads, and they’re in college at the time. So, they would go and have a drink and chill in the lodges and stuff.”

“Lads Having a Drink and Chilling” is also another great way of selling Young Sherlock to someone who isn’t quite sure about this new incarnation of the great detective. But make no mistake, this is still a Holmes series through and through, with several overlapping mysteries that form the arc of Season 1, as well as episode-to-episode mysteries that are somewhat self-contained. If this version of Holmes feels more Peaky Blinders than Basil Rathbone, the slick powers of deduction are still prevalent throughout the series, even if, on occasion, the show gently mocks its own legendary status.

To put it another way, Young Sherlock has enough actual Sherlock Holmes mystery-solving to be embraced by fans as a bona fide entry into the massive pantheon of other adaptations and interpretations of Doyle’s work. But the “young” part of it is crucial: Fiennes Tiffin isn’t trying to out-Cumberbatch Cumberbatch, but he is a very, very convincing version of Holmes, minus some of the anti-social behavior. We all know Sherlock Holmes was a great man but often a horrible friend. What Young Sherlock presupposes is maybe he was an awesome friend and, at one point, a really fun, hot-headed young guy.

Like Ritchie’s other Holmes entries — the eponymous 2009 film and 2011’s Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows — there’s a stylized, exciting mix of action and intrigue, littered with quippy dialogue, and charming performances. What makes Young Sherlock stand out, though, is that it somehow makes all these elements feel novel again. It’s funny, it’s sexy, and crucially for a Holmes series, it’s smart. When Fiennes Tiffin says “The game’s afoot” in this series, it feels like he’s the first person who’s ever uttered the line.

Young Sherlock streams on Prime Video. The series premiere is streaming now. New episodes drop on Wednesdays.