Enola Holmes review – a new Sherlock-related franchise is afoot

It’s no secret that Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous creation lays claim to more appearances on screen than any other fictional character. Over the past several decades, we’ve seen Sherlock as a pugilist action-hero, a modern-day sleuth, and in a painfully unfunny slapstick guise.

Now there’s a feminist spin in which "The World's First Consulting Detective" is pushed aside in favour of his younger sister Enola, played by Millie Bobby Brown, in a peppy adventure yarn.

Based on the young adult novels by Nancy Springer and adapted by Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), we are thrust back into the 19th Century and introduced to the youngest Holmes sibling. Raised in the halcyon environs of the ancestral home with her mother Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter), Enola’s days are free from patriarchal influence. Mother and daughter spend their time, not at needlepoint, but in a robust education involving archery, chess, and reading Mary Wollstonecraft. That is until Enola turns 16 and her mother vanishes, leaving behind a series of clues. 

Enter her brothers, Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mycroft (Sam Claflin), the latter of whom is less shocked by his mother’s disappearance than the free-spirited nature of his ward. While he tries to bundle her into a finishing school, Enola hatches a plan to find her mother that involves more wit, guile and intelligence than both of her siblings combined. 

Fleabag director, Harry Bradbeer has crafted a charming adventure, which once again employs direct-to-camera asides, peppily delivered by Brown, that bring the audience into her confidence as she narrates her own tale. It’s an effective device, although very different in tone to Fleabag. 

The construction of the actual mystery at the heart of Enola Holmes is a so-so affair. As a Holmes spin-off it works well-enough, although it can’t hold a candle to Barry Levinson’s gothic delight, Young Sherlock Holmes. Cavill’s Holmes is probably the most dashing ever committed to screen, but is very much pushed to the shadows, whilst Caflin’s Mycroft is a wonderful mixture of moustache-twitching malevolence and misguided paternal care. 

The film’s greatest success is that Bradbeer has successfully translated Springer’s very contemporary-feeling feminism from the novel to a narrative which centres around the advent of women’s suffrage. “Paint your own picture Enola. Don’t be thrown off course by other people, especially men,” intones Eudoria near the beginning of the film. Lines like this, laced with a light feminism, show this Sherlock spin-off has more to offer than first meets the eye. 

At every turn we witness the young, puckish Enola outwitting the men around her, whether rescuing  the foppish lord Viscount Tewksbury (Louis Partridge) from gun-toting assassins, or escaping Mycroft’s plans to make her a respectable lady. And at the centre of it all is a standout performance from Millie Bobby Brown, who shows that, young as she is, she has much to offer and the signs of a very bright career ahead of her. 

• Enola Holmes is released by Netflix 
• More film reviews on theartsdesk