Move Over, Sherlock...

Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown takes centre stage as Sherlock Holmes’ high-kicking super-sleuth sister

- Rebecca Fletcher

After battling supernatural creatures in Stranger Things, as well as terrifying monsters in last year’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Millie Bobby Brown’s new gung-ho role is playing a gutsy, 19th-century super-sleuth in Netflix mystery Enola Holmes.

The one-off, action-packed period drama sees the British teenager play the titular character and sister of the great Sherlock Holmes. Helena Bonham Carter co-stars as Enola’s eccentric mother, Eudoria, who has raised her daughter to be a free spirit, with a talent for solving word puzzles and a healthy distrust of society’s conventions and rules.

When Eudoria disappears on her daughter’s 16th birthday, a stricken Enola is left in the care of her older brothers, an already famous Sherlock (Henry Cavill), and Mycroft (Sam Claflin), who swiftly send her off to finishing school to address her ‘unladylike’ ways.

Unsurprisingly, the headstrong teen isn’t a fan of the school and escapes, disguising herself as a boy. Hiding on a train, she meets a runaway lord (Louis Partridge), before heading to London to decipher hidden clues that may help her to find her mother.

‘What you’re watching is a young girl trying to find herself in hectic chaos that she doesn’t really know how to handle,’ says Brown, 16. ‘The broader message is about female empowerment. Yet we also show that, hey, it’s OK to be a young girl and really not know what you’re doing or what your purpose is in life. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have one. It means that you just have to find it.’

IDEAL ROLE