Alternative histories of Sherlock Holmes are as fulsome as canonical adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s nineteenth-century detective tales. In the final season of the BBC television series Sherlock, creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss invented an older sister for the Holmes siblings Sherlock and Mycroft. Eurus Holmes, an unhinged and malevolent genius who nearly destroys her brothers, is yet another attempt to bind the famously ascetic and aloof detective in the web of family and society.
In the Netflix original film Enola Holmes, the sister is vastly younger, nearly as intelligent and shows every sign of following in her sleuthing sibling’s footsteps. Directed by Harry Bradbeer and adapted with wit and vim by Jack Thorne from Nancy Springer’s fictional series of the same name, Enola Holmes blasts many holes in the Sherlock Holmes canon without causing too much…