With the complete works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes now in the public domain, the flood of canon-futzing interpretations of the sleuth continues unabated with Sherlock&Daughter. Created by Brendan Foley, this forward-looking what-if tests the emotional flexibility of the eccentric detective by dropping a soapy case at the doorstep of 221B Baker Street: Suppose the emotionally distant, seemingly asexual Sherlock Holmes had a long-lost daughter, a young Native American woman who seeks his help to solve her mother’s murder? True to Doyle, this easy premise soon unspools into an engrossing mystery—and becomes a pretty fun show to boot.
Sherlock & Daughter begins, as these Holmesian affairs often do, with the seasoned detective (David Thewlis, poised and prickly) invited to crack a fresh case. And he promptly does, only to halt his whirlwind inquiries upon the discovery of a red string. The time is 1896, five years after Doyle’s “The Final Problem,” which fatefully pitted Holmes against his nemesis, Professor Moriarty (played here by a vampy Dougray Scott). Yet Holmes is still miles away from dignified retirement: That crimson strand is the calling card of an international criminal cabal known as the Red Thread, who’ve kidnapped Holmes’ stalwart companion, Dr. Watson, and his long-suffering landlady, Mrs. Hudson, using them as leverage against the detective whenever he gets too close to a case they’d prefer left to the more corruptible London constabulary.
It’s a sinister plot worthy of Holmes, but this series is a duet. The premiere leaps across the globe to Amelia Rojas (Blu Hunt), who embarks on a journey from California to England packing a mysterious jade-hilted knife, a tragic backstory, and the spunky tenacity one expects from a CW heroine. “You’d be surprised what you can do when you don’t have a choice,” she quips, shortly before fending off a street thief with a milk carton to the head.
From here, the series locks its dynamic into place: Holmes is a brooding genius hindered by compromise, while Rojas becomes his fearless, if overzealous, chargé d’affaires. Thewlis and Hunt imbue their characters with nuance and charm, charging the emotional push-pull at the core of this fraught relationship. There’s no shortage of heart nor intelligence in Sherlock & Daughter, with Foley’s teleplays engagingly threading their mutual growth into the increasingly knotty intrigues that unite them.
But wait, some fussy Doyle traditionalists might ask, so Sherlock Holmes is at the mercy of criminals? And he, despite never paying much attention to the fairer sex, fathered a child in a fit of passion? (Surely, Irene Adler would have a word with the producers if she existed.) While Amelia’s parentage is left tantalizingly in the air (mostly by Holmes, who seems reticent to get at the truth), Sherlock&Daughter makes sensible updates to the established canon without tossing out the essentials. Thewlis’ Sherlock is still exacting and exasperating (he delivers a deadpan masterclass in the soft-boiling of eggs) and his devotion to logic remains intact, with a new layer of paternal confusion adding texture without losing the peculiarities that make Holmes such a memorable fellow. “It’s odd how concern for your safety affects my concentration,” he later adorably tells her.
With Watson missing (at least in the four episodes made available to critics) and Moriarty locked away in prison, Amelia finds herself in the unenviable position of becoming Sherlock’s primary foil, a role historically filled by men (with respect to Adler and Hudson) that’s now portrayed by a woman of color navigating the race- and gender-stratified gauntlet of Victorian London. When Amelia enters Holmes’ home, she does so through the servants’ entrance. Later, she’s mistaken for a sex worker (or “a street creature of easy virtue,” as Holmes puts it). Holmes’ job is a breeze compared to Rojas’, whose investigations are beset with suspicion and discrimination. Yet Amelia remains sanguine about the prospects of catching her mother’s killer.
With the Red Thread scrutinizing Holmes’ every move, he strikes a non-negotiable pact with Amelia: She must pose as Sherlock’s cook while assisting him in this convoluted mystery, obeying only his commands and maintaining a low profile. Naturally, Amelia, the precocious American, seizes every opportunity to break these rules. Her learning curve as an amateur sleuth, delving deeper into the Thread’s conspiracy by examining its various crimes, gives the series the cadence of a crime procedural populated with shady characters and furtive members of London’s upper crust. For Holmes, the plot undeniably thickens, or at least becomes a lot more fun, with the arrival of Moriarty, suggesting that Sherlock&Daughter could improve with a conspicuous villain guiding its plot instead of the nebulous one it currently has. When Holmes visits his foe in his cell, their encounter culminates in a disarming (and plot-necessary) scene where the two men swap clothes, the show casually toying with their literary enmity. “It’s touching how we keep up with each other from afar,” Moriarty says with a grin.
Sherlock & Daughter does indulge a few CW hallmarks, too: Amelia meets a strapping yet enigmatic Australian boy (Joe Klocek), who plays a larger role in the conspiracy and is also quite tall and easy on the eyes. (Their banter is breezy: “You have that American way of getting right to the point,” he tells her. Amelia: “And you have a way of not answering direct questions.” It’s love.) For now, the show has successfully intertwined mystery with melodrama, and American impertinence with English stiff-upper-lip stoicism, and nimbly added fresh stakes to a dog-eared story. In the end, whether Amelia Rojas is truly the daughter of Sherlock Holmes will be beside the point. By blood or by bond, the two make a pretty great team.
