Speaker 1: From the Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.
Speaker 1: I'm Claire Harvey. Sherlock Holmes, the famous pipe smoking uber detective,
Speaker 1: is back, but with a twist in. Young Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 1: has been given the Guy Ritchie treatment, all British action
Speaker 1: hero with fast cuts and gritty fight scenes. In the
Speaker 1: lead is Hero Finds Tiffin. He plays a young Sherlock
Speaker 1: Holmes at Oxford, long before he's set foot on Baker Street.
Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes has been adapted for film and television more
Speaker 1: than any other human character, from Basil Rathbone to Will Ferrell,
Speaker 1: Bennedic Cumberbatch to Robert Downey Jr. So is there really
Speaker 1: an appetite for another Sherlock? And what is there left
Speaker 1: to say? Anyway? Joining me today is The Australian's Gisell Bwetti,
Speaker 1: who's written about young Sherlock for The Australian's Culture section.
Speaker 2: My name is Sherlock Holmes. I've always been more of
Speaker 2: a thinker than the fighter.
Speaker 3: The two aren't mutually exclusively as an act.
Speaker 2: The feeding as not to war Lactually that's stealing. Those
Speaker 2: days are really behind me. I'm in Oxford now, you
Speaker 2: have to promise me surly anything. Mother. Today, out of trouble.
Speaker 4: Shelock Holmes, James Moriarty, Sherlock is speaking friends.
Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes is back for a new generation. And today
Speaker 1: I'm joined by the Australians in house. Sherlock Holmes expert
Speaker 1: who also happens to be our audience lead.
Speaker 2: Giselle, Betty Gazelle. Who is that playing Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker 5: That's Hero Fine Stiffen. He comes from a pretty prominent family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course Ray Finds. Joseph Fines.
Speaker 1: Ray Finds played most famously, of course, Voldemort in the
Speaker 1: Harry Potter series, and that's where Hero got his start too.
Speaker 6: Yes, he played the young Tom Riddle as an eleven
Speaker 6: year old.
Speaker 7: I can make things move without touching them. I can
Speaker 7: make animals do I want without training them. I can
Speaker 7: make bad things happen to people who mean to me,
Speaker 7: can meet.
Speaker 6: Them hurt.
Speaker 1: If I want a very chilling scene, I remember when
Speaker 1: he encounters the magical world. He doesn't quite understand his
Speaker 1: own powers. He's absolutely terrifying, even at the age of eleven.
Speaker 6: Yes, he's got the sinister stare down pat which I
Speaker 6: feel like he's going to use that in the new series.
Speaker 2: And so what sort of Sherlock Holmes is? He? Is
Speaker 2: he scary?
Speaker 6: H He's not necessarily scary. He's a bit mischievous, very charming.
Speaker 6: He's got that charm, the wit that Benedictkomabatch has, and
Speaker 6: he's also got the strength, the grit and the physicality
Speaker 6: of Robert Downey Jr's Sherlock.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those are some of the actors who've played Sherlock
Speaker 1: Holmes in the past much adapted character. Why are we
Speaker 1: still adapting Sherlock Holmes more than one hundred years after
Speaker 1: he was created?
Speaker 6: I think that people resonate with Sherlock because he uses
Speaker 6: his intelligence in chaos to find the truth, which is
Speaker 6: something that we all want to do. And each of
Speaker 6: the versions we've seen of Sherlock reflects the time.
Speaker 1: Yes, Benedict Cumberbatch played Sherlock Holmes a few years ago,
Speaker 1: probably in the most recent adaptation that I saw, and
Speaker 1: that was very much in the sort of shadow of
Speaker 1: the Afghanistan War. It was in a pretty dark, gritty,
Speaker 1: modern London, wasn't it. What was Benedict Cumberbatch's adaptation?
Speaker 6: Like he showed us the modern version of Sherlock. How
Speaker 6: Sherlock Holmes could survive in a technical era.
Speaker 1: Let's play a little bit of Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker 1: You're the second person to say that to me today.
Speaker 5: Who was the first?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 4: Foreh just in sixty seven? Natural causes used to work here.
Speaker 5: I knew him.
Speaker 2: He was nice. Fine, we'll start with the riding crop.
Speaker 2: So bad day, was it?
Speaker 8: I need to know what Bruce's form in the next
Speaker 8: twenty minutes.
Speaker 2: A man's alibi depends on it.
Speaker 4: Text me listen, I was wondering maybe later when you're
Speaker 4: finished lipstick. You wear lipstick before I I refreshed it
Speaker 4: to pit.
Speaker 2: Sorry you were saying. I was wondering if you'd like
Speaker 2: to have coffee black two shutters, please have the upstairs.
Speaker 1: That is a very modern Sherlock homes. But he's pretty cold,
Speaker 1: isn't He's not? He's not giving a lot of warm away.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he has a lot of attitude.
Speaker 6: And also he reintroduced Sherlock Holmes to new generation of viewers.
Speaker 2: His sidekicked.
Speaker 1: Doctor Watson was played by Martin Freeman, famous for, of course,
Speaker 1: the movie The Hobbit and millions of other productions. Including
Speaker 1: four weddings and a funeral, and his nemesis Moriarty was
Speaker 1: played by Andrew Scott Yes, also known as the Hot Priest.
Speaker 2: He was terrifying.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he did such a good job of the mind manipulation,
Speaker 6: that little crazy look in his eye, but also with
Speaker 6: still that wit and charm.
Speaker 3: Okay, how do you feel about the violin?
Speaker 1: Sorry?
Speaker 8: What I played the violin when I'm thinking? Sometimes I
Speaker 8: talk with days On and with that boy, the potential
Speaker 8: plantmate should know the worst about each other.
Speaker 1: So they're talking about the violin and Sherlock's hobby. I
Speaker 1: guess there's another aspect of his genius that harks back
Speaker 1: to one of the really earliest adaptations of Sherlock Holmes,
Speaker 1: doesn't it.
Speaker 6: Who was that Basil Rathbone. He played Sherlock in the
Speaker 6: nineteen thirties and I think was in fourteen films of
Speaker 6: Sherlock Holmes. He is the epitome of Sherlock. He made
Speaker 6: the deer stalker hat famous as well as the pipe,
Speaker 6: and he also had that gentleman charm of the old days.
Speaker 2: Let's see a little bit of that.
Speaker 3: I trust I don't come in opportunita, My dear fellows,
Speaker 3: if you ever could come on, pull up a chair.
Speaker 1: Does the modern Sherlock Holmes in the new series play
Speaker 1: the violin.
Speaker 5: Not that we've seen so far.
Speaker 6: He's more into fighting like the Robert Downey junior version,
Speaker 6: but he's very He's not there yet. Moriarty is currently
Speaker 6: better than him. But it's cool because you get to
Speaker 6: see the formation of where he learned to fight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so tell me what are we learning about him?
Speaker 2: What's the setup?
Speaker 6: So in the first episode we see him at Oxford
Speaker 6: where he meets James Moriarty and they actually become friends.
Speaker 2: And is Dr Watson in there as a character a
Speaker 2: young not.
Speaker 6: Yet, but we do see Colin Firth make an appearance
Speaker 6: as one of the professors.
Speaker 2: Ah, some British acting royalty there.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, it's a very stellar cast.
Speaker 1: And it's a you know, the ultimate English part, really,
Speaker 1: isn't it with the Irish nemesis in Moriarty. Having Robert
Speaker 1: Downey Junior play Sherlock Holmes was a revolutionary choice from
Speaker 1: a memory. He did a pretty bad English accent.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah he did. He was definitely a more rough
Speaker 5: version of Sherlock.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's play a little bit of Robert Downey Jr.
Speaker 2: As Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker 8: M Hey, mister Lewis, isn't one case that intrigues me
Speaker 8: at present? The curious case is Missus Hudson the absent
Speaker 8: tee Landlady. I've been studying the cummings and goings, the almost.
Speaker 5: Tea.
Speaker 2: Mister Holmes, is it poisoned?
Speaker 3: Nanny?
Speaker 2: There's enough of that a new or don't touch everything.
Speaker 8: That's in this proper place as per usual, Nanny, I.
Speaker 2: Just killed the dog again?
Speaker 6: What have you done to Gladstone? Now?
Speaker 8: I was simply testing a new anesthetic.
Speaker 2: Just know that was Jude Law alongside Robert Downey.
Speaker 6: Jeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, very good chemistry.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Is that your personal favorite?
Speaker 6: Well, one of the things I love about this one
Speaker 6: is when he does the fight scenes, they like pull
Speaker 6: it out and you get to see him calculate every move, which, yeah,
Speaker 6: is really interesting.
Speaker 2: So young Sherlock is in origin story.
Speaker 1: It's where we start getting to know Sherlock Holmes, and
Speaker 1: he's going to acquire all those characteristics of grumpiness and
Speaker 1: disorganization and maybe some neurodivergence that we've seen in future adaptations.
Speaker 1: Who is the person who Hero finds Tiffan makes out
Speaker 1: of Sherlock.
Speaker 2: What sort of kid is he?
Speaker 6: One of the things he mentioned in the interview was
Speaker 6: that he was nervous about playing with his uncle Joseph Finn,
Speaker 6: and he thought he was doing a really good job,
Speaker 6: but then when he got to those scenes, he got
Speaker 6: really nervous and wasn't sure if he was second guessing himself.
Speaker 6: And I think that's kind of reflected in the character
Speaker 6: that he plays, where it's like he has the skills,
Speaker 6: he knows what he's doing, but he just hasn't got.
Speaker 5: The confidence yet.
Speaker 2: Who does Joseph Fines play?
Speaker 5: He plays his father.
Speaker 2: It's funny to think of him having parents.
Speaker 6: Yes, yeah, yeah, and it adds that extra layer. I
Speaker 6: suppose we also get to find out little bits about
Speaker 6: his siblings as.
Speaker 1: Well, coming up when Sherlock Holmes's world collides with Guy Ritchie's.
Speaker 1: The series is created by Guy Ritchie, who really reinvented
Speaker 1: British cinema in the nineteen nineties. He created a very distinctive,
Speaker 1: very kind of cool action slash crime heist movie style,
Speaker 1: I guess in Lockstock and Two Smoking Barrels and then
Speaker 1: Snatch also created a whole new generation of British stars
Speaker 1: what's his influence on this series? Do you think it's
Speaker 1: definitely action packed?
Speaker 6: But I have only seen the first few episodes, and
Speaker 6: Hero did say that it does start to get a
Speaker 6: bit more serious and emotional.
Speaker 5: Guy Ritchie told Hero to keep.
Speaker 6: The emotions under control and to lean more into, like
Speaker 6: the theatrics full side of it, so that when those
Speaker 6: big emotional scenes did come up, it was more jarring
Speaker 6: because you're not expecting it, because it's been up here
Speaker 6: the whole time, and then all of a sudden, it's, oh, this.
Speaker 5: Is really deep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about the kind of emotional side of
Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes. He is simultaneously as a character, very perceptive, obviously,
Speaker 1: but also quite dense. He misses things that are happening
Speaker 1: right in front of him. That's an intriguing kind of
Speaker 1: character to plays and to write.
Speaker 6: So Jeremy Bratt, who played Sherlock in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 6: TV series, his version was a lot more psychological. It
Speaker 6: showed that the complexity to his mind, and he almost
Speaker 6: has that depressive feel to it. He may be this
Speaker 6: really intelligent genius, but you know he's got emotions too.
Speaker 3: What do the public? The great and observant public. You
Speaker 3: can have to tell her we are by his tooth
Speaker 3: and I I'm positive by his left dumb tell about
Speaker 3: the finest shades of analysis a deduction.
Speaker 1: Audiences have huge appetite for mysteries, don't they. You're an
Speaker 1: audience lead here at The Australian, so you spend a
Speaker 1: lot of your time minutely analyzing exactly what audiences are into.
Speaker 1: What do you see in their kind of interesting crime
Speaker 1: and as big kind of crime stories washed through the
Speaker 1: news cycle, what do you see the audience kind of
Speaker 1: leaning towards them?
Speaker 2: What do you think is behind that fascination that we have.
Speaker 6: There's so much chaos in the world and we're all
Speaker 6: just trying to make sense of that chaos and understand
Speaker 6: it it a bit better, And like especially the way
Speaker 6: that Sherlock makes sense of the chaos of the confusion.
Speaker 5: At a time when you know we're all a bit confused, it's.
Speaker 6: Nice to have someone to look to that to make
Speaker 6: us believe that we can kind of make sense of it.
Speaker 6: All that finding the truth and understanding the truth and
Speaker 6: how to get to the truth.
Speaker 2: Who's your favorite ever, Sherlock homes I.
Speaker 6: Did like Benedict com of Bachelor's version, just like a
Speaker 6: lot of millennials. Yeah, yeah, he's just got something about him,
Speaker 6: you know. But I also liked Johnny Lee Miller, who
Speaker 6: played Sherlock in Elementary, which was in twenty nineteen. I
Speaker 6: believe it was a different, very very different take. He
Speaker 6: was like a drug addicts, tattoos everywhere. It played more
Speaker 6: on the psychological thriller part, which I like.
Speaker 2: Who do you think he's going to find?
Speaker 5: Hero?
Speaker 2: Find Stiff and their favorite Sherlock Homes. Is he aimed
Speaker 2: at really young people or or not?
Speaker 6: The Sherlock fandom is so big and spans over so
Speaker 6: many different age groups as well that I think, no
Speaker 6: matter what, people will want to tune in just to
Speaker 6: see what's what was Sherlock like as a young boy.
Speaker 1: In a lot of the adaptations, particularly that Benedictkumabatchewan, we've
Speaker 1: seen attempts to modernize Sherlock Homes bring him into the
Speaker 1: modern world. This is very much taking him back even
Speaker 1: before the Arthur Conan Doyle story, So seeing him as
Speaker 1: a teenager essentially in the eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting choice for a show that really does
Speaker 1: need to connect with a new generation.
Speaker 2: Isn't it.
Speaker 5: Yes, definitely. I think that.
Speaker 6: At the moment, younger people in particular were very emotionally vulnerable.
Speaker 6: Looking at Sherlock as a young person, he's very emotionally
Speaker 6: vulnerable and he's not that character that knows the answer
Speaker 6: to everything. He will be one day, but he's getting there,
Speaker 6: and I think that's very reflective of young people at
Speaker 6: the moment. We are more in touch with our emotions.
Speaker 6: I say that I agree with that, and more open
Speaker 6: to understanding where our traumas come from. And I think
Speaker 6: this is what's really interesting about this show is that
Speaker 6: we get to see where Sherlock's traumas came from.
Speaker 2: She's Elbwitty. Thank you very much for joining me.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Young Sherlock is streaming now on Amazon Prime in Australia.
Speaker 1: She's Elbwetti is a journalist at The Australian. You can
Speaker 1: read her feature on Young Sherlock at the Australian dot
Speaker 1: com dot a u slash culture. This episode of the
Speaker 1: Front was hosted by me Claire Harvey. It was produced
Speaker 1: by Jasper Leik and edited by Josh Burton. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us on the front This week. Our team also
Speaker 1: includes Kristen Amiot, Leah Tamaglu and Tiffany Dimack.