‘Young Sherlock’ might have been better as a weekly release

By Sophie Monastra

A few weeks ago, the Arts & Entertainment division asked each other a question: Do you prefer having each episode released week by week, or for the entire season to drop at one time?

I forgot about this discussion until I opened Amazon Prime and discovered eight 45 to 55 minute episodes waiting for me.

As a proponent for the weekly release schedule, I believe “Young Sherlock” would have worked better as a more spaced-out release. Instead, audiences got a 6.5-hour-long cannon barrage of nonstop action, plot twists, anachronistic pop soundtrack and revelations without much character reflection.

The show focuses on Sherlock Holmes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), a young, unruly miscreant who is not yet the brilliant detective of Arthur Conan Doyle’s canon. He and his family are haunted by the trauma of Sherlock’s younger sister’s death and mother’s subsequent institution in an asylum.

While at Oxford, he meets a young scholar named James Moriarty (Dónal Finn). They’re both framed for the robbery of priceless scrolls brought by Princess Gulun Shou’an (Zine Tseng), a visiting Chinese princess. As Sherlock and Moriarty work to clear their names, they uncover a bigger mystery that only grows in scope and complexity as the story progresses.

The costume design of “Young Sherlock” is beautiful and distinct (especially Princess Shou’an’s wardrobe). The set is detailed and intricate, and it sets the 1870s British Empire well with only a few perceived historical inaccuracies. While the plot and mysteries are riddled with logical leaps and make less sense the more I think about them, they are serviceable and entertaining.

The main issue with the series is “scope creep”- to outdo previous seasons, a show broadens the scope larger than the series premise was originally designed to have. 

For most shows, this problem happens around the 3rd or 4th season. “Young Sherlock” turned a small Oxford-set mystery into an international conspiracy and weapons plot by episode 5. 

There are not enough moments of reflection or character building; the entire series is paced at the speed of the British Empire’s expansion. This speed and broad series scope seems to be a trend with TV series, especially with streaming. It has become rare for series to get more than a season or two, and many try to fit in as much content as possible.

For “Young Sherlock,” the content is the overarching series mystery, and unravelling it comes at the cost of character development. After six and a half hours, the characters have experienced no meaningful development besides Sherlock’s mother, Cordelia, escaping a mental institution and becoming more sane and Moriarity’s apparent shift to villainy (not a spoiler; “The Adventure of the Final Problem” has been published for 133 years). 

Other character changes came without warning. Characters knew information about each other that, based on continuity, they should not have known. The show fails to balance audience knowledge – the audience either has more information than the characters, or the characters uncover a clue that the audience physically can’t. 

“Young Sherlock” is also packed with subplots to build tension – Sherlock’s mother in the asylum, Shou’an, a bunch of murdered Oxford professors, Sherlock’s dead sister–all of these plot points end up connecting, but in doing so, they overwhelm the viewer. There are constant revelations coming from every subplot, which built tension, but desensitized the audience to further revelations.

The biggest offender was episode 8, the season finale. In the span of 55 minutes, so many major plot events happened that each event only got a few minutes of screen time. Everything felt rushed towards a giant explosive conclusion.

I found watching “Young Sherlock” exhausting. I prefer watching shows that focus on serialized character building, and “Young Sherlock” simply didn’t have the time to balance that with the story the show wanted to tell. 

Do I still hope it gets another season? Sure.

Will I watch it again? Well, maybe just one episode a week.

“Young Sherlock” is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Sophia Monastra is a Senior Professional Writing and Information Design major and A&E writer. She is not designed for binging TV series.

Images courtesy of Amazon Prime.