Sherlock Holmes is the gift that keeps on giving for mystery movies and series – a character iconic enough that people know who he is without needing to be told much, but also malleable enough to fit into a bunch of different directorial visions and styles. One of the most successful in recent years, of course, was created by Guy Ritchie and performed by Robert Downey Junior in two big-budget movies.
Ritchie's returning to the character, though, in a new series for Amazon Prime Video that just got a proper full-length trailer. It looks like a pretty charming portrait of the private detective as a young man, causing all sorts of trouble in his university days and even striking up a friendship with his future nemesis.
The young man himself will be played by Hero Fiennes Tiffin (if you're wondering, no, he's not Ralph Fiennes' son – he's his nephew), and it looks like he's going to have plenty of fun with the role. Opposite him, at least as far as the trailer goes, is Dónal Finn as James Moriarty, who'll famously go on to be Holmes' rival later in life.
The plot appears to revolve around a murder at Oxford, one that Sherlock is perilously close to when it happens. He'll not only have to prove his own innocence, but also work out just what caused the death, which might mean uncovering a conspiracy of quite surprising proportions. Swirling around him will be all sorts of other characters, some of them played by big names.
They don't come much bigger than Colin Firth, of course, who pops up a few times in the trailer as an extravagantly mustachioed man called Bucephalus Hodge, apparently, which is quite the name. He appears to be some sort of senior don, and possibly one of the many people trying to keep a lid on Sherlock's exuberance.
Indeed, keeping a lid on things is relevant, as I'd say it sums up what Ritchie might need to do if the series is to be a great success. He's a fun filmmaker, but can at times slide into pastiche of his own style, and he's at his best when he isn't trying too hard to be iconic or overly stylish. We'll see how the show fares when it comes out, of course – on 4 March.
