Enola Holmes 3: Elementary, dear reader

Enola Holmes 3 (2026) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five); rated PG-13, for violence and dramatic intensity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

This series continues to delight on all levels.

 

Director Philip Barantini, new to the franchise, blends its many diverse elements with stylish élan. He’s rewarded, in this third entry, with fine performances from everybody in the cast: most notably star and co-producer Millie Bobby Brown, the driving force behind these stylish film adaptations of Nancy Springer’s popular books.

 

During a flashback sequence, Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) recalls how surprised and
delighted she was, when Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge) proposed with an
improvised ring.

Over time, Sherlock Holmes’ world has been blessed with both faithful film and television adaptations of Doyle’s famed stories, and all manner of book and film pastiches and alternate universe twists on the original characters. It’s a testament to the adroit flexibility of Doyle’s characters, and the tolerant devotion of his fans, that so many of these what-ifs have been successful.

That’s certainly true of Enola (Brown), the 20 years younger sister of Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill, also reprising his ongoing role). In this telling, as faithfully adapted by scripter Jack Thorne, Enola was raised from a young age by their uncharacteristically feisty, free-thinking and mildly eccentric mother, Eudoria (the apparently ageless Helena Bonham Carter, also returning).

 

Eudoria ensured that Enola would be both book-educated and taught to be sharply observant, resourceful and able to take care of herself, thanks to jiu-jitsu self-defensive skills. Enola also became adept at puzzles and word games; indeed, her unusual name is “alone” backwards, a reflection of the fact that most people she encounters refuse to take her seriously.

 

The first film — based on Springer’s first novel, Enola Holmes and the Case of the Missing Marquess —  introduced all of these elements, threw Enola into her first case, and concluded with older brother Sherlock grudgingly acknowledging her detective skills. Thorne and co-scripter Harry Bradbeer veered away from Springer’s books for the second film, focusing instead on an actual historical event perfectly suited to Enola’s endeavors: Britain’s July 1888 matchgirls’ strike, which led to the creation of the Union of Women Matchmakers.

 

Thorne once again dips into established history for this third film, which cheekily removes Enola and Sherlock from their comfortable London setting.

 

“Every good story starts with a wedding,” Enola pertly tells us, as the film begins, once again breaking the fourth wall: one of this series’ many hallmarks. She continues to do so as the story proceeds, frequently pausing to address us directly, or to shoot us a knowing glance. This succeeds because of Brown’s skill with Thorne’s well-scripted dialogue, thus drawing us intimately into these events, as if we’re long-trusted allies.

 

The wedding is her own, to beloved Lord Tewkesbury, Marquis of Basilwether (Louis Partridge, also returning). He has matured from the callow, useless young man of the first film, and now has become a seasoned orator and rabble-rousing member of Parliament, doing his best to move the needle on social and gender equality.

 

Somewhat unexpectedly, their wedding is taking place in Malta, thanks to a suggestion made by Tewkesbury’s mother (Hattie Morahan), who believes this an important acknowledgment of her late husband’s military career.

Mr. Holmes: Far from elementary

Mr. Holmes (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for disturbing images and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

Some stage actors spend their entire careers hoping to play Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman. When it comes to great literary characters, however, the ne plus ultra appears to be Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen, left) is delighted when his housekeeper's young son,
Roger (Milo Parker), expresses interest in the great detective's beloved hives of honeybees.
The boy, in turn, senses that sharing this hobby will help his much older friend forget, if
only for brief times, the unpleasant frustrations of advancing age.

How else to explain the scores of individuals who’ve taken a crack at the world’s most famous consulting detective? When Guinness World Records honored Holmes as the most portrayed literary human character in film and TV, three years ago, he had been depicted 254 times by more than 75 actors.

That list now includes the venerable Ian McKellen, starring in director Bill Condon’s adaptation of Mitch Cullin’s 2005 Holmes pastiche, A Slight Trick of the Mind.

Arthur Conan Doyle purists may be dismayed by this handling of their beloved detective, for this is not the hard-charging rationalist depicted with authoritative panache by Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett, Benedict Cumberbatch and many others. McKellen instead gives us a frail, almost feeble Holmes, long removed from his illustrious career, vulnerable to the ravages of time, advanced age and self-doubt.

Condon’s film has an atmosphere of despondent finality about it: a tone similar to that employed by Richard Lester in 1976’s equally melancholy Robin and Marian, wherein Sean Connery’s exhausted and aging Robin Hood is poised at the similar precipice of mortality.

But even if this Holmes is a shadow of his former vigorous self, McKellen’s twinkling eyes and insightful gaze (at the detective’s better moments) remind us that the zealous pursuer of clues may be deeply buried within this dilapidated frame ... but he’s still there.

The time is 1947, and the 93-year-old Holmes is long retired, having moved to a quiet farmland home along the Sussex coast, in order to tend to his bees (as per Doyle’s projection of where the detective would wind up, late in life). Meals and other modest needs are handled by a live-in housekeeper, Mrs. Munro (Laura Linney), and her young son, Roger (Milo Parker).

Her husband, the boy’s father, was killed in the war.

Scripter Jeffrey Hatcher retains the structure of Cullin’s book, which cross-cuts between three narratives. The first and most extensive, set in the “present” of 1947, finds the increasingly lonely Holmes bonding with young Roger, who in turn admires the great detective as a father figure. Roger’s mother, all too aware of Holmes’ age, worries that this might not be advisable for a boy who already has lost his real father.