Well, no prizes for guessing what the theme of this month is. With the release of Enola Holmes 3 on the first of July, it pretty much chose itself, and way back in September 2024 I mentioned wanting to watch some of the other Sherlock Holmes adaptations that were floating around on YouTube.
The thing I found most interesting in watching so many in quick succession is the way they speak to each other across the years; how they’ve inspired and influenced each other. You can clearly see the shift from Watson as a doddering sidekick to a more respected partner, or the change in the treatment of subjects like colonialism and the British Empire, or even the use of the supernatural and its veracity.
For instance, it’s tempting to wonder if 1985’s Young Sherlock Holmes inspired the 2009 Robert Downey Jr film in its use of an occult-tinged mystery, and clearly the former’s use of colonization as a plot-point has markedly changed. Back then it was used to justify the existence of a creepy Egyptian cult and give the villains a sad backstory that was promptly ignored because they were sacrificing virgin girls. Fast-forward four decades and the British Empire’s treatment of its colonies makes for largely sympathetic “villains” in both Enola Holmes 3 and 2026’s Young Sherlock series.
It’s just fascinating the way these stories reach forward and back the way they do, providing a linked chain across the years.
Also, I saw a record three live performances this month, largely thanks to the fact it was the school holidays and I am determined to instill a love of theatre in my little nephew. As ever, two Babysitters Club books, the second instalment of trilogies from Philip Pullman, Scott Westerfeld and Philip Reeve, and a few Victorian-era Gaslamp period dramas. They went hand-in-glove with Sherlock Holmes.
The Reluctant Dragon (Malthouse Theatre)
It was the school holidays, and I was determined to make the most of my time with my little nephew (currently five years old and in his first year of school). I have very positive memories of going to the theatre when I was a kid, so I’ve made it my self-appointed duty to give Finn the same experiences. And it was very fitting that our first excursion was to the Malthouse, an old brewery that was long-ago renovated into a theatre and costume-hire facility, which I frequented often as a little girl.
One of the things they do well is children’s theatre, in which shows are very casual and short (and inexpensive – our tickets were $10 per person, though there were posters from decades past on the walls which had tickets for only 50 cents!) Children grab a cushion on their way into the theatre, adults sit on chairs against the wall, and it’s a given that the performers will pick some volunteers from the audience at some point.
The Reluctant Dragon is a no-brainer when it comes to children’s theatre adaptations – it’s such a sweet, simple story, but with the opportunity for fun costumes and hammy performances. We had Finn prepped for what to expect (we’re not going to make another Charlie and the Chocolate Factory mistake) and he chewed his popcorn quite happily throughout. Afterwards took his programme around the foyer to get autographs from (and photos with) the cast. It was so well done, and I can’t wait to take him back.
The Snow Queen (Rangiora Town Hall)
Our second outing was to The Snow Queen, a fairy tale I’ve always loved. This was out in Rangiora, and if it wasn’t quite as polished as The Reluctant Dragon, that was because it was performed (and seemingly produced) by young teens and children. As far as I could tell, there’s a drama school out there that stages these shows every year, and they involve so many participants. When everyone came out for their bows, I was astounded at just how many children were involved – it must have been pushing one hundred, and they just kept emerging from backstage!
Their take on the story put a new spin on the proceedings, in which the magic mirror is crafted by the Goblin King for his bride-to-be, who accidentally looks inside and is horrified by what she sees. He explains he only made it to reflect a person’s inner darkness in order to demonstrate that no one is perfect, but Eleanor is having none of it. She loses faith in humanity and takes off for the northern reaches.
Things proceed more in-line with the story from that point on, with Kay getting a shard of the mirror in his eye and turning hateful towards his girlfriend Gerda, soon to be whisked off by the Snow Queen so she can put him to work in her palace (not to spell “eternity” out of ice shards, but to put the mirror back together like a puzzle). Gerda goes after him, meeting variations of Hans Christian Anderson’s characters along the way (the raven turns up early and tricks her into staying with the flower witch, the princess is reimagined as a tomboy artist, the Lapp and Finn women are just two old ladies – only the Little Robber Girl remained exactly as she was in the original tale).
Along the way there was plenty of singing and dancing to pop songs, including Sara Bareilles’s “Brave” when Gerda heads off to find Kay by herself, and despite being extremely long (one hour per act), it managed to hold Finn’s attention – though he got a little nervous of the smoke machine.
And yes, the Goblin King was definitely modelled on David Bowie in Labyrinth, complete with glitter eyeshadow, though his plot died on the vine. He never got reunited with the Snow Queen during the course of the play! The whole thing ends with the Snow Queen seeing the error of her ways and accompanying Kay and Gerda all the way back to the latter’s grandmother’s house – not something that’s easy to imagine happening in the original fairy tale.
I’m sure there was some adult supervision in there somewhere, but it did seem to be a show that was put together by its young performers – even the crew were teenagers, as seen when they came out for their curtain call. A couple of performers temporarily froze onstage as they struggled to remember their lines, and there were a few random scenes (such as tapdancing flowers) that were clearly included to incorporate preexisting talent, but you could tell this was a labour of love.
My sister was with me, and she said she glimpsed a grandmother in the aisle behind us looking incredibly proud, and there were definitely some whoops and cheers from the audience whenever the dancing started. In fact, we might have been the only people there who weren’t family members – though my sister recognized the girl playing the Snow Queen as one of her former students.
I would kill to see The Snow Queen adapted faithfully on the screen; perhaps in stop-motion to capture its fairy tale quality – though Frozen has probably put a stop to that, given its cultural ubiquitousness. Still, imagine what Laika could do with the material…
A Frozen Adventure (Southern Ballet Theatre)
This was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen! I booked these tickets thinking it would simply be a winter-themed ballet for children, and instead it was a truncated version of Disney’s Frozen. They had to tread carefully around copyright laws, as even though the costumes and score were clearly taken from the film, the programme listed the names of “Elsa” and “Anna” as “Elsie” and “Annie.”
Not that anyone minded, as most of the young female audience turned up in their Elsa and Anna costumes, and at least one toddler was so excited she performed her own little dance in the aisle throughout (her poor mum looked frazzled, but no one cared).
For such young performers (many of whom would have still been in single digits) they danced beautifully, and for such a small local production it was so professional; just incredibly elegant and polished. If you didn’t know the gist of Frozen you may have been a bit bewildered as to what was going on – not least because that film is extremely convoluted – but it managed the basic story beats: Anna is excited about a royal party, she meets and quickly becomes engaged to Hans, Elsa forbids the match and loses control of her icy powers, Anna meets Kristoff and Olaf as she follows the fleeing Elsa into the wilderness, Elsa accidentally hits her with an icy blast, Hans reveals his true colours, and Anna saves her sister’s life by standing between her and certain death. Oh, and the trolls turn up as well, and they were adorable.
There were some neat little tricks, such as Hans dowsing a fire by “throwing” a bucket of water at it and the light in the fireplace being immediately dimmed in response. They also did some great work with the lighting: a blue snow blizzard whenever Elsa let loose, and then yellow-orange warmth when the sisters embraced at the end.
But if you were ever in doubt that this story was a cultural force for little girls, then you’ll just have to take my word for it that when Elsa danced to the strains of “Let It Go,” an honest-to-God hush fell upon the audience. The targeted demographic was in awe. Apparently my sister played Frozen for Finn that night on Disney+, and it’s now his new favourite movie. What have I done??
Royal New Zealand Ballet: Winter Season (Isaac Theatre Royal)
I received a text at work from a friend asking me if I wanted to go to the ballet short-notice: her partner had come down sick and wouldn’t be able to go. Well, I’m never one to turn down the ballet! As it happens, I prefer a ballet with an actual story, and this was one of the company’s seasonal productions of whatever dances they felt like performing – the advantage being that I had never actually seen it before.
There were three altogether: “Birthday Offering” which was first performed at Covent Garden in 1956 for the Royal Ballet’s 25th birthday (and here danced for the first time in New Zealand), “Ultra Folly,” which was delayed thanks to Covid and fittingly very physical and playful, and “Stand to Reason,” which was created for the women of the Royal New Zealand Ballet in 2018 to mark the 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage in New Zealand.
“Birthday Offering” was the most traditional of the three, with some very lovely colour-coordinated rainbow tutus, while “Ultra Folly” was set to La Folia variations, which are considered one of the oldest European musical themes still remembered today (perhaps dating back to the mid-fifteenth century in the Iberian Peninsula). This was somewhat ironic, considering the dance itself was very modern and abstract, with lots of quick bird-like movements and body distortions.
That leaves “Stand to Reason,” which was a political piece about the fight for women’s right to vote in New Zealand, supplemented by an overhead projection of clauses in The Women's Christian Temperance Union’s “Ten Reasons Why the Women of New Zealand Should Vote,” first published in 1888. Some of the reasons presented were sound (“it has not yet been proved that the intelligence of women is only equal to that of children, nor that their social status is on a par with that of lunatics or convicts”) while others now come across as remarkably silly (“the presence of women at the polling-booth would have a refining and purifying effect.”)
But oh yeah, the dancing! Performed entirely by a women’s corps de ballet, it involved dark silk dresses and plenty of chest-beating, dress-rending and stamping in formation. Perhaps not quite as fierce as I would have liked, as it leaned more into agony than triumph. I mean, as terrible as the world is right now, the fact remains that the suffragettes did secure the right for women (both Māori and Pakeha) to vote in Aotearoa before any other country in the world, and that’s worth celebrating.
Of course in saying that, the dance ended with a list of places (starting with Vatican City and ending with Saudi Arabia – essentially the crux of the West and the East) where women’s rights are curbed, so there’s clearly still a very long way to go.
Regardless, it was a fun and unexpected night out, I just feel a little bad that someone else had to miss out so that I could go.
Dawn and the We Love Kids Club by Anne M. Martin
This has got to be the most misleading title since The Mystery at Claudia’s House (no real mystery) or Jessi and the Bad Babysitter (she wasn’t bad, just not used to following the BSC rules). This book only minimally concerns the We Love Kids Club, with most of the page count devoted to Dawn’s truly insane behaviour in the second half of the book. Seriously, I was reading it and thought at any moment the text would read “and then I woke up.”
Almost directly on the heels of Dawn and the Surfer Ghost, which has got to be a publishing error (usually they stagger the babysitters out more broadly) we’re reintroduced to Dawn’s current situation: living in California with her father and brother for six months and attending meetings of the We Love Kids Club. In contrast to the BSC, the WLKC is super-casual. They only have meetings when they feel like it, there’s no notebook or record book, and parents usually call them up at their own homes.
With that in mind, you may be wondering why they have a club at all. What’s the difference between what they do and what parents without access to a babysitting club do when they need someone to look after their kids? Well, that’s a good question, and I cannot answer it for you.
Despite this, a local news outlet hears about what they’re doing and runs a small article on them, which is quickly followed by a local television station doing a feature as well. The girls are thrilled, though it leads to a surge of new customers that they’re not remotely prepared for – so they end up double-booking jobs or forgetting about them entirely.
In a funny turn that this book should have really been about, Kristy learns about the publicity the California girls have received and goes green with envy, largely because she feels proprietorial about the concept of a babysitting club. She tries in vain to get the BSC on the local news, much to the annoyance of the other girls considering they’re short two members and don’t need any more publicity.
(Also, Kristy, the BSC has been in the paper plenty of times. Remember when you found Jake Kuhn? Or when Dawn broke up that dog-napping ring? Or when Claudia and Dawn were stranded on that deserted island for a while?)
But all this only takes up a few chapters of the story. The real meat of the book is when Dawn’s father announces his engagement to his girlfriend Carol, and Dawn decides to freak out over it. Leaving a passive-aggressive note to her father and lying to her friends about feeling unwell, Dawn bunks school, steals her dad’s credit card, books a flight to Connecticut and is on the plane by the end of the day. (This is the part where I started wondering if it would all turn out to be a dream or an elaborate fantasy).
But nope, it really happens and when she touches down on the west coast her mother is waiting for her and she’s rightfully PISSED. Her father was beside himself with worry over the stunt she pulled, and Sharon can’t believe she stole money and booked a flight all by herself. Jeff is upset that his sister ditched him, the WLKC is annoyed that she lied to them, and the situation puts so much strain on her father’s relationship with Carol that they call off the engagement. Yeesh. I can see why Dawn is one of the least-liked characters in the series. I can handle the self-righteous veganism, but this is truly crazy behaviour.
Dawn soon lets herself off the hook for all the strife she caused, though one can’t help feeling she considers the outcome as a job well-done. After all, she got what she wanted: a shitload of attention and Carol out the door.
And don’t get me started on her soapboxing: when Carol cleans up a spill with paper towels, Dawn thinks: “it is so environmentally wasteful to use paper towels for a water spill. A dry sponge would have soaked it up just fine.” Okay, but do you HAVE a sponge on hand, Dawn? DO YOU?? “Carol marched proudly back to the kitchen to throw out her soggy portion of destroyed American forest.” Also, she will not shut up about health food: “I couldn’t wait to get to my house and make a fruit smoothie in the blender,” “vegetable chips are the best; they’re like potato chips, except they’re made with carrots and parsnips and sweet potatoes and other great stuff,” “Maggie was in the middle of describing a scrumptious soba noodle dish, with sesame paste and water cress,” and “ready for my award-winning vegetable chimichangas tonight?”
She also jokes the club should be called OFEC for “Organic Food Eaters Club” and informs us they have a health-food cookbook, each with a file of personal recipes. All this is in the first TWO chapters, so I’ll leave you to imagine just how insufferable it gets throughout the entire book.
(There’s also a little subplot about Stephie wanting a mother, but I honestly can’t remember how that wrapped up. For a hot second I thought she was going to try and set up Dawn with her father).
So far the California-based books (all two of them) haven’t been that great, especially since Sunny, Maggie and Jill aren’t very well-drawn characters (and looking ahead to The California Diaries, the actual Dawn spin-off, it seems as though Jill gets dropped entirely). Honestly, I think my favourite part was back in Stoneybrook, with the description of lunchtime at the Pike residence as: “Pikes at Trough.”
Mary Anne and the Library Mystery by Anne M. Martin
Dawn and Mary Anne in one month, whew. It has not been a great month for good Babysitters Club protagonists, and this is not a very good mystery.
Mary Anne is lonely since Dawn is in California and Logan is involved in volleyball competitions (er, since when?) so leaps at the chance to volunteer at the local library where a bookathon is about to commence. Most of the Stoneybrook kids are excited about it, especially since there are prizes for those that read the most books.
But on her first day working there, the fire alarm goes off. As they evacuate, she and Kristy smell smoke, suggesting it’s not just a drill. As it happens, they don’t even get the chance to leave the building before the “small fire” (as Mrs Kishi describes it – remember, she works there) is put out, and “within minutes” everyone is back to doing what they were before. For the record, this is nonsense. If a fire alarm goes off, then practice drill or not, everyone would have to get out and stay out until fire department gave the all-clear.
It feels like a fluke, but soon enough, it happens again. This time the babysitters learn that a book was set on fire and dumped in a trashcan, requiring a much lengthier evacuation.
They gather their suspects, first and foremost being Mrs Ellway, a grumpy librarian whose family donated the land upon which the library is built – with the stipulation that if anything happened to it, the land would be returned to the family. I have never in my life heard any kind of legal clause like that before, and it’s practically begging someone to burn the place down.
Second are the book banners who are protesting outside the library, of whom Mary Anne says: “I have never understood why people want to ban books. I mean, if they don’t want to read certain books, that’s fine. And I guess what they let their own children read is up to them too. But why should they keep other people from reading what they choose?” Well, Mary Anne it’s because they watch Fox News, which loads their heads with garbage to distract them from all the heinous shit their elected officials are doing elsewhere, and they’re stupid enough to have fallen for the grift.
The irritating thing about having book banners as suspects is that the ghostwriter doesn’t bother getting into why they’re doing what they’re doing, and then they’re not the culprits anyway. One of them hands out a list and says: “these books are dangerous for the children of Stoneybrook,” but no explanation is given as to why To Kill A Mockingbird or The Grapes of Wrath or A Wrinkle in Time or How to Eat Fried Worms are being targeted.
(Another one is Bridge to Terebithia, of which Mary Anne says: “I couldn’t remember anything terrible about it.” Really, Mary Anne? Was it a pleasant, stress-free book from start to finish in which nothing bad happens whatsoever? Was it??)
The final suspect is Nicky Pike after Mary Anne notices a matchbox falling out of his backpack, though the girls are quick to eliminate him on faith.
It turns out the would-be arsonist is Sean Addison (brother of Corrie, who I honestly couldn’t recall from previous books) who – and I’m not kidding – was doing all this simply because he didn’t want to do the readathon. In his words: “I just did it because I hate being in the stupid readathon. I don’t even like to read, but my parents said I have to do it. They always want me and Corrie to do all these activities.”
Um…what? I guess you could assume it was a cry for attention, but how the heck is burning books going to get him out of doing the readathon? Why not just fake an illness? Or, I dunno, just say: “I don’t want to do this.” Trying to burn down a library to get out of reading books feels like a pretty huge leap. Turns out he was also the one to hide the matches in Nicky’s backpack, while the fire alarm at Stoneybrook Middle School is chalked down as an unrelated incident. (But seriously, much like Mel in Beware, Dawn! it might pay to keep an eye on this kid).
I’ll give the ghostwriter credit for two things: capturing the essence of being a librarian, in which you’re always trying to do twenty things at once: “Ms Feld was simultaneously talking on the phone, repairing a ripped book jacket, and checking out a stack of cassettes for a harried-looking mother with a baby in her arms,” and an interest in bringing back babysitting charges who are all but forgotten about in the main series: Corrie Addison, her brother Sean (who as mentioned, I have no memory of), Rosie Wilder, Betsy Sobak, and Norman and Sarah Hill, none of whom have been seen in a while.
But sadly, the book banning idiots don’t get any kind of comeuppance (we couldn’t have seen a firehose turned on them at full blast?) and the heartwarming reveal that Nicky has won the readathon for his age group doesn’t make much sense either (he claims he wanted to surprise Mary Anne with his win by reading the most books out of anyone, but her job as a volunteer at the library was specifically to monitor the readathon participants. How’d he pull it off without her realizing?)
The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman
To go with my Sherlock Holmes month, I wanted to read a few things that vibed well with the cobblestone/gaslight/horse-drawn carriage aesthetic, maybe with a dash of steampunk to go with it. That was as good a reason as any to return to the trifecta of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials books, Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan trilogy, and Philip Reeves’s ongoing Mortal Engines series. There’s something about them that just go together, like the right wine with cheese (not that I know anything about either wine or gourmet cheeses).
This was the second book in Pullman’s The Book of Dust trilogy, but unlike the first, which was a prequel featuring Lyra as an infant, this is set on the other side of the His Dark Materials trilogy, featuring Lyra as a young woman. I have actually read it before, but the recent release of the final book in the trilogy, The Rose Fields, made me realize that I had virtually no recollection of what happened in it – save that Lyra and Pan are fighting, that it ended on a cliffhanger, and that there was a very bizarre interlude with a man on fire whose daemon was a mermaid. And that’s not a great starting point for a new book, knowing it picks up directly from where the last one leaves off. As such, a reread was in order.
There is a thing called a palinode, in which a writer (usually a poet) recants the sentiments he or she expressed in a previous work. Pullman is doing something rather similar, as with his concept of a “secret commonwealth” and a slightly more sympathetic portrayal of churchmen and people of faith, one gets the feeling he’s pushing back on his unilateral dismissal of religion in his original trilogy.
On a more prosaic note, certain things that were established as rare or even well-nigh impossible in His Dark Materials now seem commonplace. As much as I like being back in this world, with all of its sprawling wonders and intricate details, it’s not quite as sharply realized as in the previous trilogy, and things that were treated as extraordinarily rare the first time around (such as a daemon being able to separate from their person, or someone touching the daemon of another individual) are now happening all over the place. There’s also a different method of reading the alethiometer that doesn’t involve the
To be frank, I’m not sure I enjoyed it that much. Lyra and Pan are at odds with each other, which means they’re relentlessly miserable from start to finish. They travel through the world, miserably separated, meeting people who are usually also very miserable. Sure, it’s meant to be uncomfortable and unhappy, but that doesn’t mean I liked reading about it.
The bad guys are difficult to tell apart, it uses the annoying “this major character had important relatives all along” trope (turns out John Faa had a son, though he definitely wasn’t mentioned in Northern Lights, and Lyra has an uncle, Mrs Coulter’s younger brother – also never brought up before), and the cherry on top is that Lyra is sexually assaulted in the final few chapters. Plus, anything that comes after the reshaping of the entire multiverse in the pursuit of a Republic of Heaven is going to feel like a bit of an anticlimax in comparison.
I don’t want to be too down on it, because Pullman is always imminently readable, and it’s easy to dismiss something that’s clearly the setup to a payoff that exists in another book entirely, but… I dunno. It’s an uneven story in many ways, from the events that take place (the man on fire feels like he belongs in a completely different book than the refugee crisis) to the odd structure of the trilogy itself (the first book was a prequel, the others are a two-part sequel). There’s a lot more swearing, and less descriptive power of place. The Oxford of Northern Lights came alive for me; this one not so much.
Also, why does Dust help the bad guys read the alethiometer? Didn’t the original trilogy establish Dust as rebel angels? Isn’t that how they identified themselves to Mary Malone in the Cave?
Look, perhaps I’m complaining pre-emptively. Judging from certain passages; the consistent sense of hidden forces pulling strings and moving chess pieces, one is given the feeling there’s an underlying story here that simply hasn’t snapped into place yet. Hopefully The Rose Fields will discern it.
Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld
Of the three steampunk-ish books I read this month, this was by far the most steampunk-ish, as well as being the least recognized by general audiences. Leviathan won a few awards at the time of its release and an anime adaptation came out just last year, but in my opinion phrases like Clankers and Darwinists deserve to be mentioned in the same conversations as Traction Cities and alethiometers and Municipal Darwinism and daemons – and they’re just not.
To quickly bring you up to speed, this trilogy takes place in an alternative World War I scenario, which is kicked off by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (as in our history) but complicated by the fact that he had a legitimate heir from his morganatic marriage called Prince Aleksander (not part of our history). As the Great Powers lined themselves up for war, Alek was whisked away by his father’s loyal servants, only to come across a great leviathan-class airship stranded in the mountains.
Deciding to assist them, Alek meets young Deryn Sharp, a girl who has disguised herself as a boy in order to join the air-force (not that Alek is aware of this, either in that book or this one). And so, a temporary truce is called between the opposing sides (Germany and Austro-Hungary on the one, an alliance between Britain, France and Russia on the other) so that they all might escape their mutual enemies and get the airship back in the sky.
Now the leviathan is continuing its journey to Istanbul on its diplomatic mission, where Doctor Nora Barlow is set to present three mysterious eggs to the Ottoman Emperor in a bid to prevent him from allying with German forces.
The trilogy’s strongest point is its world-building, which is based on Westerfeld’s reimagining of the First World War. The Allies are Darwinists, who craft their technology from the experiments of Charles Darwin, who – in this world – perfected the art of gene-splicing, allowing for the bio-engineering of all kinds of creatures that are bred to perform particular functions (including lizards as messengers, pachyderms as pack animals, and great hydrogen-filled whales as floating transportation vessels).
On the other side of the fence are the Clankers, who look upon the Darwinists as godless heathens who have tampered with natural law. In response, they’ve developed steampunk technology for their weapons and modes of transport, based on the work of Nikola Tesla. Given that we’re now in the second book, Westerfeld has room to delve into more nuance when it comes to the opposing worldviews of the Triple Entente and Central Powers – I loved the detail that a Clanker girl gives a fabricated creature a name, something that the Darwinists are mildly horrified at, or that the mechanized walkers found in Istanbul aren’t (just) utilitarian, but designed to look like minotaurs or goddesses or other mythological creatures – works of art instead of ugly weapons.
Speaking of Istanbul, it’s the setting of much of the plot, and it’s beautifully rendered; a perfect melting plot of East and West, a blending of Darwinist and Clanker technology, filled with its own people, culture, politics and unrest. I loved exploring it along with Alek and Deryn, to the point that I was a little disappointed when the conclusion of the story takes them to new regions.
Just as the scope of the war broadens, both in the countries involved and the intricacies of the politics it encompasses, so too does the friendship between Alek and Deryn deepen, with the former finding a trusted companion and the latter desperately trying to hide her softer feelings towards him. There’s one heartrending scene in particular in which Deryn finds herself in the perfect position to confess her true self to Alek, only for a glib comment on his part to ruin the moment.
Any good sequel (or middle instalment) will endeavour to expand itself in this manner, and Westerfeld wisely choses to pull the trigger on the contents of the three mysterious eggs that’re being transported by the leviathan to the Ottoman Empire – and does not disappoint. I won’t describe exactly what a “perspicacious loris” is, but rest assured, it’s delightful.
German saboteurs, American reporters, local revolutionaries, foreign dignitaries, fabricated creatures, mechanized war machines, plots that weave in and out of each other, plenty of vivid, fascinating characters (I haven’t even mentioned Count Volger yet) and it’s a wonder that it reads as fluid and elegantly as it does. My only complaint is that Nora Barlow isn’t in it as much as she should be.
As for the rest of the world-building, Westerfeld beautifully crafts everything, right down to the little linguistic details (terms like a “load of yakum,” “snootful,” and feeling “a squick of relief”). Likewise, the artwork is gorgeous, and Keith Thompson worked in close collaboration with the author to match each other’s visions. I really can’t fathom why it isn’t as renowned as His Dark Materials and Mortal Engines.
Bridge of Storms by Philip Reeve
In many ways, this book is the purest expression of the central premise of this series in its entirety: a chase between two Traction Cities, the bigger attempting to devour the smaller, and the tactics and manoeuvres each one utilizes to either avoid or accomplish this objective. It’s essentially Mad Max: Fury Road, right down to a main character who is actually called Max.
Having first met them in Thunder City, our oddball found family of mercenaries and adventurers-for-hire are commissioned by the residents of Museion to escort them safely from their mountain hiding place and across the Hunting Grounds to London, where they have agreed to be willingly “eaten” in order to preserve their vast array of knowledge and the artefacts they have accrued across the years. But first they need to evade the nomads calling themselves the Junkyard Dogs, lying in wait for their departure, another Traction City called Crawley that has a strange secret of its own, as well as the treacherous terrain and the titular Bridge of Storms, which becomes the city’s only means of escape.
Tamzin Pook (former ring-fighter), Max Angmering (young man of privilege), Hilly Torpenhow (historian and governess), Oddington Doom (aging mercenary), Vespertine (Revenant, also called a Stalker) and Small Cat (self-explanatory) agree to the request and fly their airship “Fire’s Astonishment” to Museion to get the lay of the land.
In Museion they meet its remaining citizens, from the ailing Gilbert Stanislaus to the half-nightwight Luka Voss – all sorts of colourful characters with evocative Dickensian names. What follows is a straightforward Chase, as our protagonists split up on different missions, and then forced back together to outwit their enemies. There’s not much in the way of character development or world-building – it’s too fast-paced for that, and only takes place over the course of a week or so.
Still, Reeves knows how to wring emotion out of his scenario, from a character who expresses romantic interest in Tamzin, only to be murdered before she ever finds out, to an older man who is terminally ill and using the excitement of the circumstances to stave off his fear of death, to a friendship that is formed and then broken by lies and suspicion, without either party ever getting the chance to fully repair their bond – yeah, this is a writer who knows how to twist the knife for maximum poignancy.
As ever, his prose, descriptions and turns of phrase are impeccable. One character interjects himself into conversations “like a helpful footnote,” while machine gun fire “nattered like vicious gossips in the stairwells.” There are little winks at other famous novels (at one point, someone calls Tamzin “a fool of a Pook!”), plenty of humorous asides (“nightwights are just things in old stories, like werewolves, or vegans”) and chapter titles such as “Miss Torpenhow, In the Library, with the Dagger” or “Out of the Frying Pan” (which is actually the name of the flat plateau where Museion is hiding). Here’s my favourite:
“Vespertine could hear [Loomis’s] heart going pitter-pat, pitter-pat inside his chest, as if he had a hamster running on a little wheel in there. She had seen a hamster running on a wheel like that in the window of a pet shop in Thorbury, and Small Cat had watched it with an intent interest. Vespertine watched Loomis with an intent interest now.”
As a midquel, Reeve can also slip in a few references to things past and future, like mentions of Fever Crumb, Ruan Solvent and Arlo Thursday, as well as the genesis of MEDUSA, which of course plays a critical role in Mortal Engines. There are also more hints about Tamzin’s past via her sun medallion and a promise that the characters will journey to Nuevo Maya in the next book. This is exciting for a number of reasons: the series has never gone to South America before, and a warmer climate is not only a welcome change after the icy cold of this book, but will hopefully remind me of the tropical climes in A Web of Air, which remains my favourite in the series.
Whenever it emerges, I fully intend to read it alongside Pullman’s The Rose Fields and Westerfeld’s Goliath. These writers just go hand-in-hand.
Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)
I’m rather stunned that I got through my entire childhood and adolescence without ever knowing this movie existed – in fact, I only found out about it a couple of years ago. Produced by Stephen Spielburg, written by Chris Columbus, an Amblin production, about the early years of Sherlock Holmes? I feel I was cheated out of my favourite film growing up!
Though it comes with an apologetic disclaimer at the beginning and end, pointing out that Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories had the two characters meet as adults (because people cared more about consistency in those days), the film purports that Watson and Holmes met at school and become friends during the course of their first mystery. A range of deaths have been occurring on the London streets, in which people are driven to madness and killed as they try to flee unseen assailants.
When it becomes apparent that his young love Elizabeth is wrapped up in the case, Sherlock gets involved, dragging Watson along with him. It’s a story that borrows heavily from other Lucasfilm/Amblin films (there are big The Goonies vibes, an unlikely flying contraption reminiscent of E.T., an “exotic” underground cult like the one in The Temple of Doom) but also contains the usual box-ticking requirements of any prequel: in this case, how Holmes got his pipe, deerstalker hat, partnership with Watson, and distaste of emotions.
In that last case, it unfortunately means that young Elizabeth is killed off almost indifferently, dying beatifically in Sherlock’s arms and thereby setting him up for a lifetime of celibacy. I mean, the character could have easily just not returned his feelings, but that wouldn’t be as poetic as the 2.5 seconds he spends grieving for her. (Just once I’d like to see a dying female character scream: “fuck this, I don’t want to die for your manpain!”) It’s all so matter of fact, I almost expected Moe to pop up and say: “and that's the origin of that.”
She was played by Sophie Ward, one of only two actors I recognized (she featured in Return to Oz as one of Mombie’s heads). The other was Roger Ashton-Griffiths as Lestrade, one of those character actors that’ve been around for years – though perhaps most recognizable to modern audiences as Mace Tyrell on Game of Thrones.
Elizabeth’s death aside, it’s an entertaining enough film, though indulges a bit much into some of the hallucination sequences experienced by various characters, and cannot resist introducing Moriarty at the very end (to be fair, I didn’t see that reveal coming, so it’s effective despite being a bit eye-rolling). There’s also the matter of the villains’ motivation, which is revealed as seeking revenge on six Englishmen who looted an Egyptian tomb, leading to a local revolt that was violently put down by the British army, resulting in the deaths of their parents. Wait… why are we meant to be rooting against them? Oh right, they’re sacrificing white virgins. Oof.
I know it was the eighties, and things are far from perfect today, but it is a still a relief we’ve largely moved past this reductive type of backstory, as evidenced by Enola Holmes’s adventures in Malta, or the presence of Princess Shou’an in Young Sherlock (see below).
One last thing: many years ago I discovered the YouTube video embedded below that montages famous swordfights in film, which actually features a clip from this movie: the exchange between Sherlock and Moriarty at 2:00. By a complete coincidence I tracked it down after watching Highlander (which also has some clips featured) and watched it again, with no idea that the Sherlock/Moriarty scene was from this movie (or even that they were Sherlock and Moriarty in the first place). Then, about a week later, I watched this movie and jumped when I finally heard the exchange in its proper context.
Highlander (1986)
Some films are just destined to become cult classics, and this is definitely one of them. Watching it, I was struck by how well it fits the niche requirements of a movie that may fail at the box office, but nevertheless commands a strong fan following: the high concept premise, the Large Ham performances, the meaningless little details that nevertheless give it a degree of verisimilitude. Throw in the Queen soundtrack, and Highlander isn’t just a cult classic… it might just be the cult classic. It’s such a crowd pleaser it’s actually difficult to imagine it was a flop.
You know how it goes: a disparate group of immortals roam the earth, occasionally meeting up and either befriending or beheading one another, compelled by a strange force that lets them know when another is close. Eventually there will be only one, who will inherit a mysterious “prize” that is only attainable through the deaths of the others. At the time the film starts, it’s been whittled down to four immortals in New York City.
It’s the little details and quirks that really make this a cult classic: the prolonged opening at a wrestling match which has no bearing on the rest of the film (at a stretch, it thematically captures the There Can Be Only One trope), the lengthy interlude in which a vigilante decides to interrupt the Kurgan and is impaled for his troubles (again, it doesn’t really add anything to the overarching plot), the antics of the police department as they get pretty deep into the case of the beheaded corpses… only to disappear entirely about half-an-hour before the end credits.
But there are also plenty of clever bits, like how things are established in the present day (the Kurgan’s neck scar, Rachel’s presence in the antique store, Connor using Ramirez’s sword) before their origins are revealed in the flashbacks, alongside some true randomness. What happened to the old lady in the car the Kurgan hijacks? Why did Connor approach Brenda at the bar, only to tell her to stay away from him a few minutes later? Where the heck was he when the Kurgan attacked his home in Scotland? The film isn’t interested in explaining every potential plot-hole, and somehow it all hangs together.
And for the eighties, it’s surprisingly kind to its female characters. No, it’s hardly a feminist triumph, and yes, the two love interests are both sexually endangered by the villain – but it could have been so much worse. Brenda in particular is a three-dimensional character who is filled with passion about her chosen field of work, and you can see how excited she gets about the antique sword she finds at the first crime scene. More incredibly, she’s not just a passive figure whenever Connor fights the Kurgan – the first time she throws him a lead piping, and the second time she saves his life by hitting the Kurgan in the back of the head just as he’s about to kill him.
Given that Olivia Munn has recently talked about a male co-star stopping production for forty-five minutes because he freaked out over how her character saved his in a gunfight, this is a depressingly big deal.
On a smaller note, Heather’s rape is mercifully kept off-screen, and she’s allowed a degree of agency in her decision to take the secret to her grave. Every time the strains of “Who Wants to Live Forever?” start up, I get a little teary-eyed. Likewise, we assume that the sex-worker sent to the Kurgan’s hotel room will be murdered horribly – yet later we find out not only did she get out alive, but she even enjoyed the experience.
Of course, there are also all the familiar faces: Celia Imbrie in an early role, James Cosmo (who may just be a real immortal, as he doesn’t look that different now than he did back then), Sheila Gish (who is also in the very first Jonathan Creek episode), Hugh Quarshie (Captain Panaka in The Phantom Menace), and of course Clancy Brown, who is so much taller than I thought he was. But even actors in bit parts leave an impression: the seedy hotel clerk with the cold sore, the highland priest who joins the men in battle, the friendly barman who is clearly on good terms with Brenda, the dignified priest who ushers the choir boys out of the chapel when the Kurgan starts ranting… like I said earlier, their presence grants verisimilitude to the whole thing.
I’ve never seen the sequels or the television show, and I probably never will – but that it managed to spawn a franchise (and an upcoming remake) is a testament to its staying power. This was our last movie at my work’s movie night, and we had a great time.
The Prestige (2006)
SPOILERS
This movie is actually kind of insane. Due to Christopher Nolan’s usual compulsion to break up a chronology, we’re simultaneously watching one man read another man’s diary, who is also reading his diary at a much later point in time. Christian Bale finds himself in a reasonably straightforward puzzle-box plot, in which it turns out his erratic behaviour and miraculous powers of transportation are down to the fact he was playing twin brothers all along, while Hugh Jackman takes a dramatic detour into science fiction land, in which Nikola Tesla (as played by David Bowie) builds him a replicating machine so he can beat his rival on the stage. Madness!
There’s also a murder trial, heady themes of obsession and self-destruction, Andy Serkis with an American accent, and not one but two dead wives (Nolan’s favourite type of female character). At one point, Jackson even plays his own body double, a completely different character who is hired for his act on account of their physical resemblance.
On paper, the premise is a slam dunk: after a tragedy during a magical act, two ambitious young illusionists become bitter enemies, each trying to outdo each other on the stage as their rivalry grows more and more intense. Whilst one is a great showman, he lacks the instincts of a truly great magician, while the other is so committed to his act that it compromises his life’s happiness, yet doesn’t know how to present his undeniable talent to an audience.
Then, one performs a trick that the other cannot figure out, driving him to obsession in the attempt to understand how it’s done and replicate it for his own benefit.
Altogether, it’s feels like eight separate movies jammed into one, though the true miracle is that it actually-somehow-mostly works. It’s coherent despite its complexity. All the threads come together. There are recurring symbols and motifs (the water tank, the canary, the rubber ball) that work brilliantly, and there’s so much food for thought, from the sacrifices Borden made for the sake of his illusion, to Angier getting agitated that his double and not himself who receives applause from the audience.
But there is no real heart to the story, a flaw which is made apparent in its final moments, when Borden and Angier have their final confrontation. As it turns out, neither one has anything particularly profound to say about what they’ve been doing for the last two hours of screentime. Borden exposes his secret (that he was a twin brother all along), though Angier is beyond caring at that point, and his last words are about how he did it all for the audience reaction (“the look on their faces”) which is a theme and motivation that has never been mentioned before.
It’s a shame, because the film is so good up until this point, presenting a perfect metaphor early on in which a bird disappears as part of a trick, only for a little boy to see through the illusion of its return and weep: “but his brother’s dead!” This scene not only captures Borden’s life story, but the death trap Angier builds for himself. That it cannot deliver a similarly satisfying denouement is striking, and you can tell that Nolan can tell the film is emotionally hollow. The attempt to wring something out of Borden being reunited with his daughter doesn’t quite cut it.
In terms of the female character, it’s pretty grim. Piper Perabo provides the Plot-Triggering Death, while Rebecca Hall unnecessarily kills herself about halfway through. (The implication is she figured out she was being shared by two brothers, and as much as that would mess you up, would it really be enough to make you abandon your child?) That leaves Scarlett Johannsen as a somewhat underwritten pawn passed between the two men: not quite a Sexy Lamp, but not much more than one either. She gets only two interesting character beats, both when she expresses a sense of solidarity with Angier’s deceased wife, and being disgusted at his response each time.
Of course, this doesn’t prevent her from having an affair with a married man later on (at least as far as she knows), though I could at least appreciate her Fuck This Shit I’m Out departure when everyone’s insane behaviour gets too much to bear.
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
It was with horror that I realized this came out nearly twenty years ago. I actually remember seeing it with my sister in theatres, during which I ate one of the best (and largest) ice creams I’ve ever had. And yeah, watching it now, the leads do look discernibly younger than they do now.
This is Sherlock Holmes as put through the Guy Ritchie filter, which means there are quick cuts, speedy edits, a certain level of street grime, Irish jigs on the soundtrack – you can always tell it’s him. A few years later he used it all to much worse effect in King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, and I still maintain he should be given a Robin Hood vehicle. That’s clearly the English hero his aesthetic is best suited to.
But Sherlock Holmes doesn’t not fit this aesthetic, even though there’s a lot of blather in the making-of reels about how this action-hero take on the character is truer to Doyle’s original text than usual. That’s not strictly true, though they definitely deliver on a better Watson, who at this time was still stereotyped as rotund and buffoonish. There are other liberties too – here Irene Adler is portrayed as Sherlock’s ex-lover (definitely not) and an original occult-tinged mystery centred on a character called Lord Blackwood.
There’s a lot going on in this movie, set at the end of the Holmes/Watson live-in partnership due to the latter’s impending marriage to Mary. Not only do the pair have to deal with that emotional upheaval, but we’ve also got a subplot with Irene working for Moriarty and Blackwood’s genuinely preposterous plan for world domination (if you can seize power because you’ve made the public believe you have dark magical powers granted to you in the year 1890, the only thing that’s going to happen is every religious fanatic on the street trying to assassinate you by whatever means necessary).
Still, we get a suitably sinister performance from Mark Strong, and Jude Law may well be one of my favourite Watsons. There’s nothing wrong with Robert Downey Junior either, though at this point I think he’s reached Tom Cruise levels of fame, in which he’s more or less playing himself than a character. As you’d expect, there’s also lots of character actors, even if they’re onscreen for only a few scenes – Clive Russell, Eddie Marsan, Geraldine James, Kelly Reilly, James Fox, William Houston… but whatever happened to Hans Matheson? He was a big up-and-comer at one stage, appearing in The Tudors and The Mists of Avalon and as the titular character in Doctor Zhivago, yet according to his IMDB profile, he hasn’t worked since 2016. This ended up being one of his last roles.
Most of all, I like the ambience. Guy Ritchie’s Victorian London is teeming with life and grit and detail, from pickpockets, fortune tellers, circus folk, bobbies – it’s a fun place to visit in this month of gaslit detecting.
As entertaining as it is, this is also an early example of a film being one long trailer for a proposed sequel, what with the prolonged tease of Moriarty’s presence. The final twist is that he was after a device that he sent Irene to acquire for him – a device that does not come into play in any way, shape or form in the sequel. This would not be the last time a franchise opener pulls this stunt.
Enola Holmes (2020)
It was during Covid lockdown that I first watched Enola Holmes, which was just what the doctor ordered: a light frothy mystery starring a charismatic Netflix star in the bucolic English countryside and a very clean Victorian London. Millie Bobby Brown is the little sister of Sherlock Holmes, who finds herself caught up in a mystery surrounding a missing marquis who someone clearly wants dead.
This first instalment is the one that has the most in common with Springer’s original book, though only in regards to its basic premise. It veers off wildly within the first five minutes, and tweaks everything from Tewkesbury’s age (he’s much younger than Enola in the book, and not a love interest in any way, shape or form) to the true whereabouts of her missing mother (here she’s joined the suffragettes, in the book she’s been diagnosed with a terminal illness and choses to spend the last few months of her life traversing the countryside with travellers).
The amusing thing about the movie was that on its release, it managed to attract a huge quantity of the dreaded discourse, from accusing Enola of being a Mary Sue, to the film leaning into a “not like the other girls” vibe, to endorsing white saviourism (I can kind of see it, but I don’t feel remotely qualified to weigh in on that one). Half of me wanted to throw my hands up and shout: “it’s a romp for tweenage girls, come on, people!” while the other has to admit that I love this kind of fandom overthink.
It’s also the film that more-or-less cemented Millie Bobby Brown’s status as a star. Not only was she a producer that brought the books to Netflix’s attention in the first place, but it was a markedly different role from her largely stoic and monosyllabic character on Stranger Things (I believe this was dropped a year after that show’s season three, where admittedly Eleven was much more verbal, though Enola was still a profoundly lighter and more effusive character). A lot of the film’s success relied on how well she could pull off the fourth-wall breaking asides that Enola engages in throughout, and she makes it look effortless.
She’s come in for a bit of backlash in recent years, but that she headlined a franchise of her own making while still in her teens is... well, how many teenagers do you know that’ve pulled THAT off?
Nightmare Alley (2021)
This is the odd one out this month, though not on purpose. I erroneously thought it was set in England’s Victorian Era thanks to an out-of-context gif of Rooney Mara in the climax, or maybe a Grand Guignol-style carnival in the Old American West during the same period. Instead, it’s 1941. Our protagonist is Stan, first seen concealing a body beneath the floorboards of a house and setting it on fire, then departing on a bus without looking back. He soon falls in with a carnival crowd and begins to learn the art of mentalism and cold readings.
As it happens, the audience is invited to do the same to him. He initially comes across as the strong silent type, and because he’s played by Bradley Cooper, we’re inclined to like him. But are you watching closely? By the second half of the film he’s an acclaimed mentalist in Buffalo, only to cross paths with Cate Blanchett’s sultry Lilith Ritter and cook up a scheme to extort the city’s elite. In her role as a psychologist, she has any number of deep, dark secrets belonging to her wealthy clients. Together they could make a fortune.
This is a very cold movie, with even more unpleasant characters than those found in The Prestige (heck, in comparison it’s practically a family film). Guillermo del Toro luxuriates in its aesthetic: first the old-timey bells and whistles of the travelling carnival, and then the art-deco glamour of upscale New York – but although the absence of any truly likeable characters isn’t a dealbreaker (in fiction, it’s more important to be interesting than likeable), it’s becoming clear to me personally that I need at least one person to root for. Without exaggeration, the climax of this film is three truly horrible people doing truly horrible things to each other, and even watching them get what they deserve isn’t much fun – just depressing.
The film is also extremely slow-paced, and with the exception of setting up the circumstances of where Stan ends up at the very end of the film, the entire first half is completely superfluous. I’m not kidding! You could start watching at the halfway mark, when Stan is performing as a mentalist in Buffalo, and be able to follow what’s happening without a problem. The characters played by Ron Perlman, David Strathairn and Toni Colette (who only appear in the first half, sans one short scene later on) feel completely pointless in the grand scheme of things.
All you really need to know is that they teach Stan his mentalism tricks – which admittedly, is quite interesting; the way comments such as “concentrate, tell me what this woman has in her left hand,” as spoken by an assistant to the blindfolded mentalist are actually telling him half-a-dozen things about the object. But the film only really kicks into gear once it reaches the second act. I’m glad I watched it once, but it left me feeling rather depressed and unsettled, so I doubt I’ll be watching it again.
Enola Holmes 2 (2022)
Having watched all three Enola Holmes films this month, I can say with some confidence that this is by far the best. Sure, it gets a little overloaded in the second act when Enola is sprung from prison by Edith and Eudoria (not that I wasn’t pleased to see them, but that whole sequence was completely unnecessary) but it has a solid mystery at its core, manages a nice balance between Enola’s professional and private life, and even finds a way to commemorate the Bryant & May matchgirls’ strike, which very much fits into the franchise’s proto-feminist themes.
It also best captures the spirit of Nancy Springer’s series, who deliberately writes her mysteries around the fact that her protagonist is a preteen girl living in the Victorian Era. The entire crux of the premise is that Enola Holmes can go places, see things, and solve crimes that her famous older brother cannot, by dint of the fact that she’s overlooked and underestimated in her society.
In this case, screenwriter Jack Thorne understands the assignment by having Enola commissioned by a young matchstick girl, who wants her to find her older sister Sarah Chapman, leading Enola to go undercover at the factory where the two girls work. It’s obviously not something that Sherlock would ever be able to do, and that the whole thing rests on the notion of sisterhood gives it a warmth and heart that’s rather absent in the previous and subsequent films, which both have a female character as their Big Bads.
It also manages the rather remarkable feat that I mentioned in that year’s best Film/Television Moments – of flipping the script on the preconceptions a modern audience would have on being introduced to a nebbish-looking white male aristocrat and a middle-aged Black female secretary. Neither are what they seem, and the twist is genuinely clever.
Enola Holmes 3 (2026)
There is a good chance this will end up being the last Enola Holmes film. It didn’t make much of a splash, the general consensus is that it’s the weakest of the three films, and Millie Bobby Brown is probably ready to move onto more mature projects. As a send-off… it’s fine.
Most of the familiar faces (sans Sam Claflin as Mycroft and Adeel Akhtar as Lestrade) are back, namely Millie Bobby Brown, Henry Cavill, Louis Partridge and Helena Bonham Carter, but also newcomers Sharon Duncan-Brewster and Himesh Patel as Moriarty and Watson respectively, who were both introduced in the second film (and in the latter case, only during a brief stinger at the very end of the movie).
In a nice bit of continuity, even Hattie Morahan returns as Tewkesbury’s mother, though despite playing a different character with a different name, Jason Watkins was obviously originally intended to be David Bamber’s character from the first film. For plot necessity he has to be a military man, which Bamber’s Lord Whimbrel already was, and the revelations concerning his character clearly would have landed much harder had he been Tewkesbury’s uncle instead of just his godfather. As it is, Lord Whimbrel is conspicuously absent from the wedding party, whereas even Mycroft gets a brief shoutout to explain why he isn’t there.
The gist of this film is that Enola’s wedding to Lord Tewkesbury is interrupted when Watson waylays her carriage to inform her Sherlock has gone missing – likely kidnapped. Given her misgivings about the marriage, Enola leaps for the excuse to ditch Tewkesbury at the altar, and throws herself into an investigation involving the British occupation of Malta, buried treasure, a number of suspects that get killed right in front of her, and (of course) the hand of Moriarty.
To be honest, it’s not a great mystery – heck, it’s not a mystery at all, as villainous monologue makes clear: all the clues and hints that Enola discovers are just breadcrumbs leading her to a specific outcome that plays right into Moriarty’s hands. Far too much time is spent on the dithering romance between herself and Tewkesbury, and I found myself wishing screenwriter Jack Thorne had stuck with women’s right as his Important Topic of Choice, as the shift into the evils of colonialism doesn’t land as hard.
Not only that, but they miss the opportunity to explore what Moriarty – here played by Sharon Brewster – feels about the largely-white suffragette movement led by Enola’s mother, and what it means to be a Black woman leading a criminal organization in 1885. Throw in Susan Wokoma as Edith Garrud (here reduced to a mere cameo), and c’mon – the juicy commentary on white feminism and inclusivity is right there! What if this Moriarty had a history (and an axe to grind) with Eudoria and her suffragettes?
All that, and I’m afraid that Sherlock Holmes stories and Old Victorian London go hand-in-hand. Why would you want to set them anywhere else?
But that a whole trilogy has been completed in six years is impressive, and that this third film exists in at all is something of a miracle given the drop-off Netflix has with second instalments of their IPs. Heck, not even Robert Downey Jr and Guy Ritchie couldn’t get a third Sherlock Holmes film off the ground. In a way it’s a shame that this is probably the end, as Moriarty and Watson have only just been introduced (and neither one gets much to do here) and there were surely more mysteries Enola could have solved before settling down.
The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire (2002)
Matt Frewer starred in four Sherlock Holmes mysteries in the early noughties, three based on Doyle’s books, and one original. I was only able to find that last one on YouTube, called The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire. Great title, but it’s not a particularly good mystery (the culprit’s motivation isn’t remotely foreshadowed, so you feel it could have been anyone) but as it happens Frewer might well have been the very first televised Sherlock I ever saw. For that reason, he feels like the definitive one to me.
They also go for the traditional – though book inaccurate – look for Sherlock, complete with pipe and deerstalker hat, and you have to admit there’s something about Frewer’s voice, bearing and bone structure (just look at those cheekbones) that simply screams: Sherlock Holmes! He plays the character as quite light and cheerful, but with the arrogance and know-it-all manner you’d expect from any iteration of the character. This is a Sherlock who sees the world as a game, and himself as the only one who fully understands the rules.
Kenneth Welsh’s Watson is… well, he’s there. Though he’s given the usual fuddy-duddy appearance of old school Watson, he’s not a figure of fun… yet neither is he an active participant in the case. He just sort of tags along, and could be removed entirely from the proceedings without much difficulty.
The story itself has Sherlock approached by a monk whose abbey is being attacked by a cloaked figure that leaves behind what appear to be fang-marks in his victim’s necks. Dismissing the possibility that it’s a real vampire (not to mention Jack the Ripper, who was active only two years before), Sherlock begins to investigate – finding threatening messages on the walls, suspicious behaviour from the other monks, and at least one more body.
Throughout, he and Watson debate the veracity of the supernatural at work in the world, which ends on quite a fun note when the ambiguous words of a psychic are seemingly proved correct. There are also a few sly shoutouts to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, with mentions of “Renfield Street” and “Demeter Lane.”
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking (2004)
This was technically a sequel to 2002’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, though you wouldn’t know it since Ian Hart as Watson is the only cast member to feature in both films. For whatever reason, Richard Roxborough didn’t return as Holmes, and Rupert Everett took his place as a very droll, lethargic Holmes – a performance that seems informed by how much the script leans into Sherlock’s drug use. Not only is Holmes portrayed as a functioning addict who ignores Watson’s constant admonitions, but the character explicitly draws a parallel between himself and the killer he’s attempting to track down, identifying the man’s fetishism as an out-of-control addiction.
It’s quite a striking contrast to Matt Frewer’s much lighter take on the character, and were it not for the fact I’ve barely scratched the surface of Sherlock Holmes adaptations, I’d be tempted to say the tone of these two made-for-television films sit on the furthermost ends of the light/dark spectrum.
Girls are being kidnapped from their homes and found dead with silk stockings shoved down their throats, and the police are bewildered as to how the killer is managing to get them out of their homes. (They remain bewildered, as it’s never actually explained how the culprit is pulling this off, unless you want to want to count the fact that residents never seem to lock their front doors. Bit of a weird thing to do when there’s a killer on the loose).
Clearly based on the Jack the Ripper killings, you’ll have to stomach a lot of dead teenage girls in this one, though there’s also a near-hilarious array of familiar faces. Perhaps the most notable is Michael Fassbender at the very beginning of his career (according to IMDB, he had only nine credits prior to this), which makes it a delayed case of Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognized. Thanks to Retroactive Recognition, any contemporary audience will immediately recognize Fassbender in his first few scenes, when he’s just standing silently in the background as a footman, and will of course realize there’s got to be more to his role than that. But back in 2004, he was a virtual unknown, and so would have blended into the background, thus retaining the reveal.
Also present is Helen McCrory as an American psychoanalyst (and Watson’s fiancée), Neil Dungeon (Midsomer Murders) as Lestrade, Jonathan Hyde (perhaps best known as Alan Parish’s father in Jumanji) as one of the victim’s fathers, and a very young Perdita Weeks as one of the potential victims. I also glimpsed Tamsin Egerton in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it role, and – most surprising of all – Rachel Hurd Wood. This would have been just after Peter Pan, and she only gets one really big scene as a victim that manages to get away, but she nails it.
One other thing: this production stands out though how the characters pronounce Lestrade’s name. In all other adaptations I’ve seen, the last syllable is rhymed with “bard,” but here it’s rhymed with “maid.” It was a little disconcerting to be honest.
Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars (2007)
Nearly twenty years on from the broadcast of this television miniseries, it now exists as a rather odd little artefact in the great annuals of Sherlock Holmes adaptations. There’s certainly nothing wrong with it: high production values, well-written mystery, strong performances – but it’s a little unsure whether it wants to focus on the Irregulars or Sherlock, and is clearly meant to be the opening salvo in an ongoing number of episodes. But since they never materialized, this is all that remains: a funny little offering that hardly anyone knows about, with a large emphasis on the Baker Street Irregulars.
The Irregulars are comprised of six street urchins: Finch, Sadie, Jasmine, Mallory, Tealeaf and Jack, the last of whom has gone missing. His sister Sadie is desperate to find him, and furious at Sherlock for not being more invested in their collective safety. But the great detective is currently distracted by a case involving The Woman – Irene Adler, who is up to some sort of mischief in the city. As is the way of most stories of this nature, the two mysteries eventually intersect.
It’s an enjoyable enough affair with several notable qualities. Jonathan Hyde and Bill Paterson play Holmes and Watson as considerably older versions of each character – by far the oldest of all the portrayals I’ve seen this month. This means they’re less physical, more cerebral, and deeply settled into their lifelong partnership, with Watson providing the gentler, warmer side to Holmes’s dispassionate handling of things. On a more surprising note, Irene Adler (played by Anna Chancellor) is here reimagined as a ruthless criminal mastermind, who at one point murders a policeman in cold blood. At least she’s not a love interest this time around, I guess.
The Irregulars are reasonably well-drawn, though Sadie ends up being something of a Decoy Protagonist since her desire to find her brother drives the first half of the story, only for her to abruptly drop out of the action in the second. I also spent the entire time squinting at Finch, thinking: “man, he looks just like Aaron Taylor-Johnson,” but repeatedly concluding: “nah, it’s not him.” Except that yes, it was him.
The mystery itself was pretty good as well. Like The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire and The Case of the Silk Stocking, it wasn’t penned by Arthur Conan Doyle himself, but of all the original mysteries I watched Sherlock Holmes solve this month, this one was by far the best.
Puffin Rock: Season 2 (2016)
If it were possible, I would drop everything and go live on Puffin Rock. It’s peaceful. It’s picturesque. It’s covered in puffins.
Though I’ve nothing to back this up, I’m certain that this show helped inspire Bluey. The animals aren’t anthropomorphized to the same extent (they can talk, but they’re not wearing clothes or living in houses) but there’s something about the gentleness of the plots and the style of the animation that just vibes with Bluey.
Like Bluey and Bingo, Oona and Baba are siblings living with their parents in an idyllic locale where every day is a new adventure. Unlike Bluey and Bingo, who are essentially children that look like puppies, Oona and Baba are children, but specifically puffin children. Along with narrating their stories, Chris O’Dowd (playing very much against type) also provides nature facts about the world they live in throughout the episodes, and everything they go through is based on experiences and obstacles that real wildlife would face. Did you know puffins can catch up to sixty fish at a time?
It’s just so soothing and calming, and whenever things get a little dangerous the gentle woodwinds begin to play so you don’t get too alarmed. You know, if you’re the target audience, which is children. Admittedly, I mostly watched this because it was made by Cartoon Saloon, one of my favourite animation studios, and it’s beautiful to behold. But it’s almost like a relaxing sensory experience as well, from the soundtrack to the sound effects to the Irish accents.
And I’ve only just discovered that a third season and a movie were released a couple of years ago!
Sherlock and Daughter: Season 1 (2025)
In hindsight, the reason I enjoyed this show so much is a strange one: it’s low-budget. Much like fantasy and science fiction, period dramas are generally quite expensive to produce since they have to build an entire world for the story to take place in, and in this case the small sets, too-clean costumes, and slightly stilted acting are clear indicators that this was made on a shoestring budget – especially when compared to Young Sherlock (see below) which is visibly more expensive.
But isn’t low-budget what television shows should be? Something small and cozy in which the main pull is getting to spend time with loveable characters on a regular basis? If you want spectacle, go to the movies. And because each episode doesn’t cost millions and millions of dollars, there’s a greater chance of renewal and a lower wait-time between seasons – at least in theory.
Another reason this works well in tandem with Young Sherlock is that (like Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars) it takes place in the second half of the character’s life, as opposed to when he’s a teenage boy at the start of his career. Set post-Reichenbach Falls in which Moriarty is incarcerated and Sherlock has long-since established himself as a famous detective, he now has to grapple with the arrival of a teenage girl who finagles her way into his household – and claims that he is her father.
That Sherlock is played by David Thewlis is rather amusing since he played the villain in Enola Holmes 2, while relative newcomer Blu Hunt takes on the role of Amelia Rojas, a First Nation girl from California who has travelled all the way to London to enlist her (supposed) father’s help in solving her mother’s murder. Sherlock denies all knowledge of Lucia Rojas, but sees an opportunity to enlist Amelia’s help – he’s currently grappling with a case he cannot investigate because Watson and Mrs Hudson have been taken hostage; their lives held to ransom should Sherlock intervene in any crime that involves a red thread.
And they’re not kidding around; Sherlock’s parlourmaid has already been found dead. The mystery that unfolds gets steadily more complicated as it goes on (I probably need a rewatch just to figure out exactly who was responsible for what and why) but there are some great character actors involved: David Thewlis, Aidan McArdle, Fiona Glascott, Ivana Milicevic (okay, she’s more of an unknown, but she was Riley’s wife for that one episode way back on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and a now rather craggy-looking Dougray Scott, playing very against type as a somewhat effeminate Moriarty, who has a son of his own he wants found.
Going in, I had hoped the show would have a Mystery of the Week format instead of an overarching investigation, but the pacing is good – even if there’s a few too many villain monologues toward the end. I really enjoyed it, not just for the charm of Blu Hunt or the obvious enjoyment David Thewlis takes in the role, but that it made the most of a very small budget.
Young Sherlock: Season 1 (2026)
Let’s take a moment to ponder the oddity that Guy Ritchie has returned to the subject of Sherlock Holmes, but that this show – based on the character’s younger years – is clearly NOT a prequel to his 2009/2011 duology starring Robert Downey Jr. (That is, certain events and meetings between characters rule that possibility out entirely). And that’s a little strange, right? Perhaps this is just his way of expressing interest in getting the much-delayed third film in that proposed trilogy off the ground, because otherwise it’s a bit of a weird coincidence that he’s returned to the same character in a completely different continuity.
The show spins a lot of plates, with Mycroft springing his younger brother out of prison and putting him to work as a scout at Oxford University, Sherlock quickly meeting James Moriarty and uncovering a sinister plot at the school, a Chinese princess with an agenda of her own targeting various professors, and a family mystery surrounding the death of Sherlock’s little sister Beatrice, which (among other things) saw their mother Cordelia taken to an asylum.
Once I got past the tedium of Sherlock and Moriarty being insufferably arrogant pricks (the type of guys who can be entertaining in fiction, but unbearable in real life) the plot kicks off and the adventure starts.
Hero Fiennes Tiffin makes for a convincing young Sherlock, though definitely channelling the eccentricities of Robert Downey Jr’s take, even if they’re not technically the same version of the character. (And yes, he’s the nephew of Jospeh Fiennes, who also appears here as Holmes Senior). Dónal Finn is an equally good choice as Moriarty, though is it just me or is he everywhere these days? He stepped in as Matt in The Wheel of Time, I’ve seen him in GIF sets for The Other Bennett Sister, and I know he recently played Orpheus in Hadestown as well (again, judging by GIF sets). I glimpsed him in this trailer too. Max Irons is solid but unremarkable as Mycroft – that said, isn’t that the whole point of the character?
Zine Tsing nearly steals the show (keep your eye on her, she’s going places) while Natascha McElhone (who looks incredible) is a warm and maternal mother to Sherlock, who can also turn Mama Bear when the need arises. Oh, and Colin Firth drops in for a few episodes as a Dead Star Walking.
SPOILERS
The major standout of the show was its excellent female characters – yeah, I was shocked too. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t expecting much from a Guy Ritchie story and it’s simply the fact they exceeded expectations that made them come across as so impressive, but truly: we’ve got an Asian “princess” with a vendetta against the men whose experiments decimated her village, and the narrative allows her to hunt them down and dispatch them without any lectures on morality or the futility of vengeance.
Cordelia Holmes (Sherlock and Mycroft’s mother) is initially locked in an asylum, humoured by her sons as mentally unstable – but on realizing that she’s telling the truth about certain things, Sherlock busts her out and defends her fiercely. What’s more, she’s not left behind when the adventure starts, but remains an active participant the whole way through.
That leaves Edie, an aide to Colin Firth’s short-lived character, who pulls off a twist I genuinely did not see coming. As I was watching the episodes unfold, I was mentally dictating descriptions of the female characters to myself – how Cordelia rallies herself, how Xiao is concentrated awesomeness, and thought to myself: “that leaves Edie, who will hopefully be better utilized in season two…” – but then she turns out to have been Beatrice Holmes all along!
It’s a masterfully done trick, from how Edie features heavily in the first few episodes, then disappears long enough for the audience to put her out of their mind, to using a similar-looking but different actress to play both Sherlock’s hallucinations of his dead sister and the girl Silas Holmes uses as a decoy to fool the rest of his family, thus giving audiences a completely different impression of what she looks like. A genuinely well-seeded and pulled-off twist.
Best of all, not a single female character dies for anyone’s manpain (or any other reason, for that matter). NOT A SINGLE ONE! Even the one that’s established as dead at the start of the show isn’t actually dead! She was unfridged and became one of the show’s most interesting characters!
Having watched this after Sherlock & Daughter, which I found very charming, I was predisposed to be a bit more judgmental of this clearly more expensive offering – but it won me over in the end. It keeps a lot of balls in the air, but comes together much more effectively than I imagined, and is never too beholden to prequelitis either (no screentime is devoted to how Sherlock gets a deerstalker hat, for example).
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