Young Sherlock Holmes Revisited

Grab a comically large magnifying glass, your favorite deerstalker, and leave Scooby-Doo in the Mystery Machine because we’ve got a mystery to solve. Today we’re looking back at Barry Levinson’s 1985 film Young Sherlock Holmes. Written by Chris Columbus and based on characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Young Sherlock Holmes stars Nicholas Rowe as Sherlock Holmes, Alan Cox as John Watson, Sophie Ward as Elizabeth Hardy, and Anthony Higgins as Professor Rathe. The story focuses on a group of people who start having delusions that lead to their deaths. When a teenage Sherlock investigates, things take a turn for the mysterious and adventuresome.

The movie presents an original Sherlock tale penned by Columbus, who was “very worried about offending some of the Homes purists.” To help keep the Hounds of Baskervilles at bay, Steven Spielberg adjusted the script to reflect a proper Victorian Era tone. Young Sherlock Holmes is also the first film to feature a fully computer-generated photorealistic animated character. The character is a knight made of elements from a stained glass window. The knight looks rough now but was a wonder of technology back in the day. Join us as we look back at Young Sherlock Holmes and discover what was afoot before Guy Ritchie rebooted the character with Robert Downey Jr. in the lead role.

Young Sherlock Holmes Revisited is written and narrated by Jessica Dwyer and edited by Bill Mazzola.