Earlier this month, season one of the new Amazon Prime Video show “Young Sherlock” aired with eight episodes on the streaming service. The show is reimagining the Sherlock Holmes story, envisioning him as a 19-year-old rebellious college student studying at Oxford in the 1870s. 

In this article, we will be talking about episode one to set you up for the remaining seven episodes, and trust me, this show is good. You will want to watch it, especially if you are a big fan of mystery dramas like me. 

This is your final warning. From this point forward, there are spoilers, so only read if you don’t mind that. If you do, go watch episode one before reading on.

Episode one is titled, “The Case of the Missing Scrolls.” The 53-minute-long episode has a lot to go over, so let’s go over it without spoiling too much. The show opens to an outdoor scene where we see two guys fishing, a boy playing, and two girls walking. The boy doesn’t want to play with her, and she wanders off and goes missing, while flashing back and forth to a man in jail. 

Then, going to a quick montage bringing us to New Gate Prison in London. A prison fight is happening in the yard, and a man calls on Sherlock to come with him. He was in prison for pick-pocketing for three months, plus contempt of court for verbally fighting with the Judge about laws for an additional six months. His brother came to bail him out, so he got out early. So, that is a big chunk of the story right there in the first four minutes before the title sequence begins.

When we come back from the title sequence, we see Sherlock all cleaned up, and his brother got him a spot as a student at Oxford. The two go to visit their mom, who is in an insane asylum since she couldn’t handle the loss of her daughter, as we saw in the opening. She claims that they are always listening to her, and when told that Sherlock is going to Oxford, she makes him promise not to get into trouble because she can’t handle losing him, too. 

So, we move on to Sherlock going to Oxford, where he believes he is a student, as his brother told him. That is, until the head porter hands him an apron and he learns that he is, in fact, not there to be a student but rather a scout, which is basically a servant. 

There is some pretty cool stuff happening with a Chinese princess that you will just have to watch to find out, but let’s just say she is awesome. But moving on, we see Sherlock cleaning around the school, doing some reading, and eventually being caught snooping through things he shouldn’t see. He is then made to bring luggage to the princess, and we learn he can speak Mandarin, which he learned while working for a shoemaker. 

I am going to be skipping over some stuff because I think it is best if you watch it yourself. Next, Sherlock is found cleaning a classroom while a professor is giving his lecture. He realizes that the professor is wrong and corrects him, and the professor is glad that at least someone caught it. This again is just another point in which he proves how smart he really is, and that he should be a student, not a scout. 

When leaving class, a young man named James convinces Sherlock to go to a party hosted by Peregrine, one they weren’t invited to before being discovered and asked to leave. A student named Eddie said that if Peregrine can outsmart Sherlock, he leaves; if Sherlock is smarter, then he gets to stay. Ultimately, Sherlock outsmarts him, causing a fist fight and leading to a chase across Oxford’s campus before escaping. 

James and Sherlock then go to the library to look at the scrolls brought by the princess, then put them back and leave. However, the next day, it turns out that the scrolls were stolen, and we aren’t sure by whom, but the library believes it was Sherlock since he was the last one seen there, and he has keys. However, it wasn’t him. 

It is time for Sherlock Holmes to solve his first crime. The thief didn’t enter with a key; they broke in through the window. The princess wants to see the scene for herself and decides to listen to Sherlock, believing he had nothing to do with it. Sherlock presents clues that the constable missed, such as a clock that was knocked off the wall and broken, staying at the time of 6:10 pm, which was after Holmes was there. It is time to prove that Holmes wasn’t responsible for the crime and find the clues to prove it.

From the broken window, the clock, footprints, and wheel prints from a carriage, Holmes is doing a pretty good job at finding the clues. The carriage tracks lead them to a bar where they find a man playing the fiddle who seems suspicious and sneaks away until Holmes catches up with him and sees that he has the scrolls and gets in a fight with him before getting away. 

James and Sherlock catch up with the fiddler in a barn, knocking him unconscious and taking the scroll case from him, only to learn they are empty. Now the question is, where are the scrolls? Did the scrolls ever even leave the library? They return to the library to investigate some more and realize that the window was broken outward, then the supports bent back inward to stage a break-in when it wasn’t really one.

They find the scrolls hidden under a statue and realize that the point wasn’t to steal the scrolls; it was to make the library get sealed off as a crime scene, because the scrolls aren’t missing; a cabinet with unknown material is now missing. They know the cabinet couldn’t have been brought out through the door since that is guarded by police. 

Chaos emerges, they break through the wall to alert those in the room to evacuate, and people start to run out, and the room mostly gets cleared before the bomb goes off, but James and Sherlock are still inside. 

They survive, and when they go back to James’ place, James tries to celebrate, but Sherlock isn’t in the mood; he is upset that they haven’t solved the crime. The princess shows up to say thank you and grab a drink. Jack decides to leave the princess and Sherlock alone; the princess tries to help clean Sherlock up, and we get a flashback to what we saw at the beginning of the episode.

I don’t want to spoil anything about what happens next, but the end of the episode is quite shocking, and you will have to watch and see what happens.

I have watched most of the show at this point and definitely give it a solid 8/10. I love the storyline, the camera work is fantastic, and the editing all give a great feel to the show. I am happy to say that Amazon has renewed the show for a second season, and I can’t wait to watch it. If you would like to give me your thoughts on the show or tell me a show you would like me to watch and review, please let me know in the comments section of the post related to this article on my Instagram page @eidanwexlermedia.