By and large, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories are a bit of a boys club – you have Sherlock and Watson, brother Mycroft Holmes, the nefarious Professor Moriarty, Inspector Lestrade. It really is a man's man's man's world. Your only major female character would be Mrs. Hudson – or the occasional appearance of Irene Adler. And while the fabrication of a younger Holmes sister might raise a few eyebrows among purists, the first trailer for Enola Holmes – which imagines a younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft and sets her off on her own adventure – looks like tons of fun. Based on Nancy Springer’s YA book series, Harry Bradbeer’s film stars Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown as the budding young investigator and is coming to Netflix. Watch the first trailer.
If all that fourth-wall-breaking and those digs at Victorian values of women caught you off guard, it shouldn’t – filmmaker Bradbeer previously directed every episode of Fleabag (barring the Series 1 opener), as well as the first two instalments of Killing Eve Season 1. And that snappy dialogue comes courtesy of the ever-prolific Jack Thorne, who adapted Springer’s book. To top it all off, there’s a top cast here – Brown looks at ease away from the Starcourt Mall and hordes of D&D monsters, you have Henry Cavill donning yet another iconic role as Sherlock, Helena Bonham-Carter as the Holmes matriarch, Sam Claflin as Mycroft, and what looks to be another great performance from Susie Wokoma.
All in, it looks like a lot of fun – with a punky aesthetic (bonus points for the stringed-up version of Hole's 'Celebrity Skin'), a sense of Wonder Woman’s early 20th Century fish-out-of-water comedy, and an enticing mystery to solve in the disappearance of Bonham-Carter’s character. We’ll see if Enola Holmes lives up to her big brother's reputation when the film hits Netflix on 23 September.