Young Sherlock to join explosion of 21st century Holmes adaptations

If you had to pick you favourite fictional detective, there are plenty of candidates. Maybe you like Hercule Poirot and his little grey cells, Jessica Fletcher and her typewriter or Columbo and his powers of observation.

But the figure that has reigned in the popular imagination remains Sherlock Holmes.

His deduction reasoning and resourcefulness is what makes him a great detective, but his haughty arrogance, drug addiction and life-or-death feud with nemesis Moriarty is what makes him a great character.

Sherlock Holmes is about to get a re-imagined origin story courtesy of Guy Ritchie in a forthcoming 2026 TV series called Young Sherlock. The title kind of tells you everything. Portrayed by Hero Fiennes Tiffin (nephew of Ralph and Joseph), it promises to reveal who Sherlock Holmes was before he arrived at 221B Baker Street.

In this timeline, he becomes a sleuth after he becomes involved in a murder case in 1870s Oxford, but given that it’s Ritchie, the action-adventure project will expand beyond the confines of a quaint English university town.

It’s not the first time Ritchie has played in the Holmes sandbox, having made two films, Sherlock Holmes in 2009 and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows in 2011, which controversially cast the very American Robert Downey Jr in the title role, with Jude Law as his companion Dr John Watson.

The films were fine, more obsessed with Ritchie’s signature whiplash action style than Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation, and more than once, it felt a bit like watching Tony Stark in a velvet coat.

The sequel fared worse because in between the two releases, a cultural phenomenon was unleashed in 2010: the Sherlock TV series with Benedict Cumberbatch.

Not since the 1980s had a British Sherlock Holmes TV series had such a huge impact. It revived interest in then 120-year-old character, who became again a global icon.

Created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, the series was slick and modern, bringing Sherlock Holmes into the 21st century. This Sherlock could use technology but he didn’t rely on it, and you could almost see his brain whirring as the puzzle pieces fell into place.

But more importantly, the writers and Cumberbatch understood that what made Sherlock Holmes who he is, is that he’s kind of a prick. A super-intelligent, inherently decent and emotionally vulnerable prick.

He could be rude, dismissive and surly, and he always had to be the smartest person in the room. But there was that spark in Cumberbatch’s performance that made him still loveable. You could relate to his pain and loneliness, and if Martin Freeman’s everyman Watson loved Sherlock, then so did the audience. Plus, you know, that mop of dark curls didn’t hurt.

When Sherlock debuted, the American medical procedural House had been on air for six years and had another two to go. The character was named Gregory House and his mate was James Wilson, but this was a Sherlock adaptation by another name.

Instead of chasing criminals and counting pips, House solved medical mysteries, all while infuriating everyone in his orbit with his arrogance. This is a format that, two decades later, the similarly themed Watson would ape.

The success of Sherlock in the UK and around the world would inevitably lead to the Americans to mount something of their own. This version was called Elementary and it starred an English actor, Jonny Lee Miller, but it was set in New York City.

The twist was a gender-flipped Watson, who was now named Joan and played by Lucy Liu. Instead of a former army doctor, Joan was previously a surgeon and now sober companion who comes to work with Sherlock when she is hired as part of his rehab process.

It was a case-of-the-week procedural with some longer arcs (Rhys Ifans as brother Mycroft was a later recurring character), but the strength of the show was this long portrayal over seven seasons of a truly platonic love between friends.

The earliest Sherlock Holmes adaptations stretch back to the 19th century with contemporaneous stage productions of Conan Doyle’s stories, and the character has never spent much time off our screens, having been played by the likes of John Barrymore, Raymond Massey, Peter Cushing, Gene Wilder, Tom Baker and even Michael Caine.

But there has been explosion in the past two decades, across all ages. This latest version might be baby Sherlock, but we also had nonagenarian Sherlock in Mr Holmes, with Ian McKellan taking on the role.

Then there’s also female Holmes, Enola, that is, the two Millie Bobbie Brown streaming movies adapted from a series of YA books that created a non-canonical sister. The man himself also makes an appearance in the form of Henry Cavill.

Could Young Sherlock add anything meaningful or fresh to a long legacy? The game is afoot.