The news arrives with the requisite fanfare: Millie Bobby Brown, the Stratford-upon-Avon-born prodigy, returns to the screen as Enola Holmes in a sequel that has the British film establishment purring with contentment. The BBC, The Guardian, and even the reliably grumpy Telegraph have all trotted out the usual paeans to 'homegrown talent' and 'British storytelling'. As if we needed another reminder that our cultural arbiters remain locked in a perpetual love affair with heritage cinema, misty-eyed over corsets and gas lamps while the modern industry crumbles around them.
Let us not be churlish. Brown is a genuinely gifted performer, and the Enola Holmes films are competently made confections. They offer a diverting twist on the Sherlockian mythos, centring the clever, plucky sister of the great detective. The production values are high; the cast is impeccable, from Helena Bonham Carter's eccentric matriarch to Henry Cavill's surprisingly gentle Sherlock. Yet the breathless coverage of this 'triumph' reveals a deeper unease about the state of British cinema.
We live in an era when our most acclaimed directors flee to Hollywood or the arms of streaming giants. Our domestic box office is dominated by American superheroes and animated franchises. And what do we offer in response? Yet another Victorian period piece, carefully curated for international consumption. It is the cultural equivalent of serving clotted cream and scones to tourists while ignoring the actual state of British gastronomy.
The comparison to Rome is inevitable: in its twilight, the Empire produced endless copies of Greek statues, exquisite but lifeless. Our film industry, too, seems trapped in a reproductive mode, recycling the same tropes of plucky British individualism set against a backdrop of cobblestones and fog. Enola Holmes is a fine product, but it is a product of nostalgia, not innovation. It celebrates a Britain that never quite existed, a fantasy of meritocracy and eccentric charm, while ignoring the very real struggles of contemporary British filmmakers to fund original stories.
Brown herself is a fascinating case study. She is a child of the internet age, catapulted to fame by Stranger Things, a show that itself is a pastiche of 1980s Americana. Now she plays the sister of a Victorian detective in a franchise designed to appeal to global audiences hungry for 'quaint Britishness'. She is a talented performer, but she is also a symbol of how our culture has become a museum of itself.
Perhaps I am being too harsh. Perhaps we should simply enjoy the spectacle of a young actress charming the world. But the uncritical celebration of this film as a 'homegrown triumph' smacks of desperation. It is the same impulse that leads the BBC to produce endless adaptations of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, mistaking familiarity for quality. It is a safe, conservative choice in a time of cultural upheaval.
If we are to truly celebrate British talent, let us also support the radical, the difficult, the new. Let us demand films that grapple with the complexities of modern Britain, not just dress up in its moth-ridden past. Millie Bobby Brown deserves better than to be the face of our national nostalgia. She deserves a industry that dares to look forward.
But until then, we will applaud Enola Holmes for its competence and its charm, while acknowledging that it is a diverting escape from a reality we are too timid to confront. The British film industry, like Rome before it, may be polishing its last masterpieces before the barbarians arrive—or before we simply fade into irrelevance.
