There are guilty pleasures, and then there’s the Enola Holmes franchise. The Netflix films, adapted from the Nancy Springer novels that gave the famous Sherlock a plucky teen sister, are designed for a younger audience in every way. Their mysteries are not nearly so sophisticated as those one might expect after watching literally any other live-action Sherlock story, and they lean more on the teen angst and romance, too. But there’s also something perversely freeing about its scope. Sometimes you just need to kick back and watch Millie Bobby Brown get herself into increasingly perilous, Victorian-era hijinks, navigating her own version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s universe (Moriarty is an evil woman here!) while cheekily breaking the fourth wall.
With Enola Holmes and a handful of other Netflix Originals, Brown has become the mistress of her own niche: if she wants to wile away her days in fun-but-forgettable actioners, more power to her. Because the Enola Holmes movies, if nothing else, are oodles of fun — and after four years, the franchise is poised to crank that dial to even zanier levels.
