In this week’s Staff Picks, Staff Writer William Hughes goes further down the rabbit hole with Sherlock Holmes and TV Critic Saloni Gajjar stresses over a new-to-Netflix (and Mubi) co*ing-of-age film.
One of the more welco*e knock-on effects of diving deep on a pop culture topic, as we did with our recent Inventory of oddball adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes canon, is that it forces you to reckon seriously with works you might previously have filed away as ephemera. When I first encountered the concept of Goalhanger Podcasts’ audio drama series Sherlock & Co., for instance, my eyes did an instinctive roll: Of course, someone (in this case, series creator Joel Emery) had decided to inject some zeitgeist into Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s century-old detective stories by reimagining Sherlock Holmes as part of the true-crime podcast boom. But a funny thing happened when I listened to the show’s first few episodes, with every intention of stopping once I’d done sufficient research to give it a well-informed entry for the piece: I didn’t. And then I kept not stopping. And now, a week or so later, I’ve consumed the vast majority of this surprisingly intelligent and funny update on Doyle’s classic tales in one massive, and very happy, binge.
One thing that quickly became apparent while writing entries for that Inventory is that Holmes and Watson can be an incredibly tricky pair for adapters to handle—so easily reduced from characters into simplistic stereotypes, the arrogant, icy superco*puter and the bumbling buffoon. The joy of Emery’s Sherlock & Co. scripts co*es not so much from how they update the Doyle stories for an era of smartphones and AI, then, but for how they update their star duo into actual people. Harry Attwell’s take on the great detective, for instance, carries many of the surface traits of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock: that sharp-clipped, distinctive bluntness in letting the people around him know how profoundly bored he is by them most of all. But the podcast’s more relaxed pace also allows Attwell to discover the softer edges of his frequently boyish Holmes, as well as giving more glimpses at his domestic life with Watson.
As for said stalwart-chronicler-turned-obsessive-audio-recorder, star Paul Waggott walks a tightrope between playing the character as a co*edic doofus. and the linchpin of the show’s emotional storytelling. Given how frequently the works it’s adapting concerned themselves with brutal murders and evil plots, Sherlock And Co. frequently veers from more sitco*-ish moments to stark scenes of violence and brutality, and Waggott’s Watson is the pivot that allows those turns to work. Aided by Marta da Silva as the show’s updated take on Mrs. Hudson, Waggott invests these most cerebral of stories with both humor and heart, nailing both the joke-y faux true crime tone and those moments where the physician and war veteran shows his inner mettle. The result is a show that tickles the brain—Attwell’s a deft hand at rattling off a classic Sherlock Scan—while also making for a funny and human listen.
Have you ever felt protective of a fictional character? It’s an urge I’ve experienced a few times in the past, but never stronger than while watching the bruising British YA drama How To Have se*. The inclination to pull 16-year-old Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce) out of her wrenching circumstance just increases as the movie progresses. On a trip with friends to a Greek party resort, the spirited teen crosses paths with the wrong type of boy—the kind who takes advantage of her lack of se*ual experience and her lack of vocabulary to express that what she suffered at his hands wasn’t consensual, it was assault.
Writer-director Molly Manning Walker starts the film like any escapade co*edy though, co*plete with blaring music, neon-colored lights and outfits, and raunchy pool parties before pulling the rug from under us. Tara (or Taz as her BFFs call her) is on a pre-college vacation with pals Em (Enva Lewis) and Skye (Lara Peake). Their agenda is simple: drink, dance, and hook up with boys. Taz feels extreme stress about the latter because she’s the only virgin in the friend group, a fact that co*es up early and often. She views this trip as an opportunity to get laid. Walker builds the tension so subtly once Taz meets Badger (Shaun Thomas) and Paddy (Samuel Bottomley), who invite the trio to hang out with them. Agreeing to it is an inflection point in Taz’s journey.
I won’t spoil too much, but let’s just say that her encounter with one of the boys ends on a sour note. Except she’s confused, depressed, and, sadly, doesn’t have the words to convey any of it to Em and Skye, so she carries on as if everything is normal. It makes for an awfully tough watch at times. I was—and perhaps you will be, too—tempted to shake Taz by her shoulders and help her speak the truth instead of going back to partying with the same crew. What’s worse is no one notices when she distances herself from them later to hide her pain. It’s in quiet moments like these that How To Have se* truly shines, making its audience question the fraught dynamics of consent and why all people aren’t taught about it at an early age.
Walker also smartly lets the camera linger on McKenna-Bruce’s face. The actor does a co*mendable job of immersing us in Tara’s fragile state of mind, and I cannot wait to see everything McKenna-Bruce does next. How To Have se*, now streaming on Netflix and Mubi, has other pivotal takeaways about se* education, female friendships, and peer pressure. Just don’t let the seriousness of the issue stop you from indulging in what is one of the most moving co*ing-of-age stories in recent years.