While director Guy Ritchie piloted two hit Sherlock Holmes films starring Robert Downey Jr. as the legendary sleuth and Jude Law as his counterpart Dr. Watson, the filmmaker is now taking the famed detective back in time on the small screen.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare director has tapped one of that movie’s stars, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, to headline the eight-episode origin story called Young Sherlock.
Prime Video teases, “At age 19, Sherlock Holmes is disgraced, raw, unfiltered, and unformed, when he finds himself caught up in a murder mystery at Oxford University which threatens his freedom. Diving into his first-ever case with a wild lack of discipline, Sherlock manages to unravel a globe-trotting conspiracy that will change his life forever.”
“With all the wit and charm of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes features, Young Sherlock will be an irreverent, action-packed origin story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s beloved detective in an explosive re-imagining of this iconic character,” the streamer promises.
For his part, Ritchie enthused, “In Young Sherlock we’re going to see an exhilarating new version of the detective everyone thinks they know in a way they’ve never imagined before. We’re going to crack open this enigmatic character, find out what makes him tick, and learn how he becomes the genius we all love.”
Incidentally, before Downey’s winning Oppenheimer run, Ritchie had hoped to get a long-delayed third Sherlock movie off the ground to follow 2009’s Sherlock Holmes and 2011’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. The filmmaker told Collider in 2023 “the ball’s in his court.”
Ritchie added, “[H]e’s in charge of the script, he’s in charge of the whole thing. I’ve moonwalked out of that until there’s a time for me to get involved.”
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