YOUNG SHERLOCK: Episode 1.1: “The Case of the Missing Scrolls”

This is a well-built first episode. Sherlock Holmes, reimagined as a young man fresh out of jail, lands at Oxford under his brother's watchful eye and stumbles into a genuinely engaging mystery — missing scrolls, a suspicious library, and a new frenemy in James Moriarty. The pacing is quick, the twists keep coming, and the new characters give the mystery real texture.

But the show earns its caution rating honestly. Sherlock and Moriarty steal and lie their way through the case without much remorse, a shooting and several fistfights bring real violence to the screen, there's brief male nudity, and four obscenities land in the dialogue. The show does want justice done — Sherlock's whole drive is to clear his name and catch a thief — but the morality around him is genuinely mixed.

That combination makes this a show for teens and adults, watched with eyes open, not a family sit-down. Preview it, then decide.

It's 1871, and Sherlock Holmes is not yet the detective the world remembers — he's a young man just out of jail for picking pockets. His brother Mycroft bails him out and steers him toward Oxford, hoping the university will straighten him out. Instead of studying, Sherlock takes a cleaning job on campus, where he meets a kind math professor, a Chinese princess, and a fellow mystery-lover named James Moriarty. When a set of ancient scrolls vanishes, Sherlock finds himself the prime suspect — and has to solve the case to clear his own name.

Three stars means this episode does its job well without being flawless. The pilot moves briskly, stacks up twists at a good clip, and gives its young Sherlock a genuinely interesting cast of new characters to bounce off — especially Moriarty, cast here as an ally-turned-future-nemesis. The mystery itself is engaging enough to make you want the next episode.

The rougher edges are in the content, not the craft: the show leans on stealing and fighting to generate momentum, and it doesn't always slow down to reckon with the cost of that behavior.

This episode wants you rooting for justice. Sherlock's whole motivation is to recover what was stolen and clear his name — a genuinely moral throughline, and Mycroft's attempt to discipline his wayward younger brother is a small but real picture of family correction aimed at good.

But the show surrounds that throughline with characters who lie and steal as a matter of course, with little visible remorse. Sherlock himself opens the episode having just been jailed for picking pockets, and neither he nor Moriarty seems especially troubled by bending the rules again once the mystery starts. The result is a worldview genuinely mixed — moral aims pursued by immoral means, without much reflection on the gap between the two.

That gap is worth naming in your own house, because Scripture doesn't treat theft or deceit as harmless cleverness even in service of a good end. "You shall not steal" is not a suggestion (Exodus 20:15), and "let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor" points toward a better way of living than the show's characters model (Ephesians 4:28). The longing this episode taps into — a young man trying to become someone worth trusting — is a real and good one; it's just worth finishing better than picking pockets started it.

Young Sherlock's first case is quick, clever, and genuinely fun to watch — but it's carrying enough theft, violence, and rough language that this isn't a show to hand to your kids unsupervised. Our answer stands: worth watching — adults only. If you're looking for something the whole family can enjoy together this week, start with our latest family-friendly picks.