Sherlock Holmes: The Teenage Menace Nobody Asked For

If there’s one thing television executives love more than ruining classics, it’s pretending they’ve “freshened them up for new audiences.” Which is exactly how we ended up with Young Sherlock—a series that takes the world’s most deductively dazzling detective and turns him into a moody sixth‑former with better cheekbones than sense.  

It’s not that the idea doesn’t have promise. In theory, looking at how Holmes became the Holmes could have been fascinating—like tracing a fine whiskey back to its first barrel. But instead, the show feels more like some well‑meaning attempt to explain rock‑and‑roll using an electric kettle and a PowerPoint presentation.  

Every scene drips with the sort of self‑importance only teenage genius stories can muster. He broods. He smirks. He walks across cobblestones in slow motion as orchestral music insists that you must feel the intellect. Meanwhile, Watson isn’t even around yet, leaving our dear boy to mumble his deductions into Victorian air so thick you could spread it on toast.  

Admittedly, it’s well shot. London looks smoky, mysterious, and charmingly filthy—the kind of place where you'd expect someone to invent cynicism. The production team clearly read the memo titled “Please make everything look like an aftershave commercial.”* And I’ll give young Holmes credit: he does have the energy of someone who’s just realised life isn’t fair and he’s going to solve that, somehow, using algebra.  

Would Sherlock himself bother watching this? Not a chance. He’d spot the plot twist in the opening credits, grumble something about emotional detachment, and go back to playing the violin in peace.  

Still, for viewers under thirty or anyone who’s ever said “I love the dark academia aesthetic,” Young Sherlock might scratch an itch. For the rest of us, it’s a reminder that sometimes you don’t need to reboot a legend—just let him smoke his pipe, insult Scotland Yard, and solve the crime already.