Netflix's tale about Sherlock Holmes's plucky younger sister is playful, star-studded, and charming- so charming, in fact, that it has incited a lawsuit from the Conan Doyle estate for being insufficiently misogynist. The complaint points out that the Holmes of the public domain is famously “aloof and unemotional”; in stories written after 1923, and protected by copyright, "he became warmer... he could express emotion. He began to respect women". The thematic prominence of both respecting women and expressing emotion in this self-consciously 'woke' and big-hearted caper makes the current lawsuit against screenwriter, director, and distributor seem somewhat inevitable.

Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown plays the quirky, brilliant young Enola, whose search for her missing mother entangles her first with a runaway lord, and eventually with- gasp!- something more sinister.Tackling institutional sexism and bowler-hatted assassins alike with the studiedly sassy quips obligatory in Holmes adaptations of late, Enola- film and character- gambols merrily over topics that might mire films intended for an older audience. Voter suppression, domestic terrorism, and taxing the super-rich all feature briefly, only to be subsumed back into a visually stunning and wonderfully acted concoction, perfectly formulated to appeal to the modern twelve-year-old.

Enola faces the additional hazards of her cartoonishly crotchety older brothers, and a stuffy finishing school run by an icy Fiona Shaw (channeling her spymistress character from Killing Eve). Alongside heroic efforts from screenwriter Jack Thorne to amplify the film's pop-feminist message by painting the Holmes brothers as pantomime misogynists, Henry Cavill's Sherlock brings an appealing, sympathetic touch of British male repression. Cavill presents a brooding, apologetic foil to Sam Claflin's equally chiselled, but slightly more unpleasant Mycroft; "I am not the villain here," sputters the latter over his billiard table and thickly oiled moustache, struggling pointlessly against his function as a caricature of Cis White Male Privilege.

Lavish settings and cinematography- rolling Shropshire countryside, stately homes, a fantastically dingy CGI London- provide a worthy backdrop for a best-of-British cast. Helena Bonham Carter and Frances de La Tour are joined by newer talent Susie Wokoma, best known for Chewing Gum; Wokoma plays one of the few non-white roles in the film, understandable given its Victorian setting, but a little more noticeable with the absence of a working class hero in the plot. Instead, we're treated to a host of impeccably well-intentioned posh white saviours and a generous dash of the old 'Not Like Other Girls rhetoric': "unlike most well-bred ladies", intones Enola smarmily, "I was never taught to embroider”.

For Millie Bobby Brown’s fanbase- young, socially conscious people attempting to navigate a turbulent and daunting future- the film offers a comforting representation of what they might aspire to. “The future is up to us!” she cries to the camera, before credits roll. For parents, the sight of a beloved child star being lightly waterboarded should at least make a change from typical family viewing.

Áine Kennedy is a London-based writer and manager of the ScriptUp blog.

Enola Holmes (dir. Harry Bradbeer, 2020) - Review