Young Sherlock review – Guy Ritchie’s bizarre detective has the charm of a waiter | TV and radio

guy Ritchie has made a new TV series about Sherlock Holmes, and the long and short of it is… well. But first, some questions. Does the eight-part mystery drama include scenes in which moody young men in flat caps shout “Oi” while hurtling through the air in slow motion? It is. Are there bare-knuckle joints during which puffy cocks cheer on other puffy cocks and Irish folk music plays frantically in the background? there. Could there also be parts where everything suddenly goes really fast for no reason, overwrought banter between tweed-pants-wearing depressives and bumbling idiots, and a feeling that although the female characters are welcome to contribute to the plot, they’re completely excluded from being any kind of fun?

Well, duh. Or rather, put it lightly, Governor, you’ve got this weird guy Guy Ritchie in the rights. Here’s Young Sherlock, a very big, very loud new series for Prime Video that’s “executively produced and directed by the guy who made Lock, Stock, Two Smoking Barrels, and then that movie with Brad Pitt, and then some other movies that apparently weren’t any of those movies” written through it like a stick of rock.

So we head to Oxford (home of “The Greatest University in the World!”), where smiling young pickpocket Sherlock Holmes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) is forced by sane older brother Mycroft (Max Irons) to earn his living as a porter. “I’ll be watching you,” he warns, as Holmes Jr. slinks around in his drama apron. And he does. But it’s not good enough to prevent a returning criminal from getting involved in his first case: a sprawling case involving deadly weapons, ancient manuscripts, international espionage, and long-buried family secrets that will shake the institution to its repairs.

But first, there’s some goofing to get into with hot-tempered new friend James Moriarty (a wonderfully assured turn from Donal Finn). “Welcome to my overactive imagination!” Holmes bellows, in the middle of the scrap, while the angry pooches scatter like bowling pins and College bigwig Sir Bucephalus Hodge (a wonderfully tired Colin Firth) gets his mutton chops in a twist.

But wait. Who is Princess Zhen Zeng who arrives at Oxford with a mysterious, tamper-evident scroll from the 5th century? Who is trying to stop the four apostles? A mysterious group of henchmen who were previously involved in a secret government mission in rural China?

Among the ensuing storm of fists and question marks can be discovered mysterious double agents, Holmes’ grief-stricken mother (Natasha McElhone), and an unusual number of prominent mustaches. (You may find yourself, like me, imagining knitting it into a ladder from which you can escape lines like: “My name is Esad Kasgarli. I am from Constantinople.”)

Ritchie’s been here before, with 2011’s “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” (the smart, funny sequel to 2009’s none-the-others “Sherlock Holmes”), a lighthearted comic book romp with an aesthetic that one is contractually obligated to describe as “dumb steampunk.” Young Sherlock – based on Andrew Lean’s Young Sherlock Holmes book series – has an almost identical energy. But what seemed new in 2011 looks less serious in 2026.

Then there’s poor Fiennes Tiffin as Holmes. His existence, as the fictional detective himself might say, is a three-pipe problem. Was it the eyebrows that stunned the producers? Or was Asda playing Bogof on Fienneses in casting week and they ran out of Ralphs? (Fiennes Tiffin’s uncle Joseph performs humorless, aristocratic duties as Sherlock’s elderly father.)

This particular Holmes is less “a brilliant crime-solver in Christendom” and more “a self-conscious waiter in a mid-range restaurant who addresses diners as ‘you guys’ while pointing the finger at prawns”. It doesn’t help that Fiennes Tiffin is teamed with the charismatic, explosive Finn, whose presence here reduces everyone inside the blast zone to a smoking mound of mustaches.

Still. Tintinny’s stuff is a hoot and Firth is a sheer delight. And there’s a breeze in all the twists that even at its most bizarre ensures that this is one Guy Ritchie subscriber who’s not exactly a pony.