This was supposed to be a post about Sherlock Holmes.

Recently, while ranking the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes movies with my buddies Sergio Angelini and Nick Cardillo, I admitted that I had never watched the series starring Jeremy Brett, arguably the David Suchet of Holmeses! I must say that the boys took me to task, and I promised that when the opportunity arose, I would get right to it. And now, thanks to My Year with Britbox, I can fulfill my promise. 

Only . . . not yet. 

This weekend was a rainy one, thanks to a series of atmospheric rivers pelting California, and I settled down for a nice binge and a cuppa. I thought about Sherlock, and so I scrolled down the alphabetical table of contents and found Sherlock Holmes. But just to the right was a square containing a cool modern design of a grove of trees and three faces, including that of Leslie Manville (Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris) and Joanna Froggett (Downton Abbey’s beloved Anna). This was Sherwood, a six-episode mini-series from 2022 – and I had heard nothing about it. Six hours later, I have come up for air to claim that forgotten cuppa and to make sure that anyone else who has let this one slide past them corrects that error immediately.

There are plenty of series like this: psychological dramas, mysteries and thrillers that originate from a panoply of countries and populate every streaming service. Some of these are mired in pulp, like all those Harlan Coben adaptations on Netflix. Then there are the countless Scandi-noir series, where Denmark, Sweden and Finland compete over which country can provide the most effective model lesson in bleakness. (The answer? Iceland) There are many advantages to this format: top-grade actors are more willing to get involved when their commitment is limited to a 6 – 10 episode length, and viewers are willing to stick it out, even when the twists are over-the-top, and the storyline jumps the rails. And this happens more often than I care to remember.

But sometimes you get a production that’s high quality from start to finish. The last time I felt this way was while watching Mare of Easttown, a 2021 miniseries from HBO starring Kate Winslet, Julianne Nicholson, and Jean Smart. It was one of the rare American-based series of this type that nailed it. (American television has been very slow to step back from both the year-long series and the tendency to follow success with a disastrous spin-off/sequel or three.) But now, it’s back to the Brits, because on a whim I decided to “swipe right” from Sherlock Holmes – and Sherwood is bloody marvelous. 

Writer James Graham took inspiration for the series from a pair of real-life murders that occurred in a village in Nottinghamshire, where Graham grew up. (I waited until I had finished watching the whole thing before I looked up this true crime, and I can’t emphasize strongly enough that you should also wait if you plan on watching the series.) The story is set in a former mining village that is deeply haunted by the 1984-85 miners’ strike. Up till now, I confess that my knowledge of this event is based almost entirely on the film Billy Elliot, with a dash of The Crown thrown in. Most of the plot takes place in modern day, but there are extensive flashbacks to events that occurred in the 80’s that have scarred individual residents forty years later and have left a deep and angry division between those who honored the strike (which, in this village, were in the minority) and those who crossed the picket lines and to this day have the epithet “Scab” hurled at them in the streets and pubs. 

The plot is deliciously complex, dark and serious-minded but not without flashes of warmth and humor. Far be it from me to go into enough detail to ruin a single twist (and there are many, many wonderful twists to be found here). Suffice it to say that Sherwood connects the lives and histories of several families from every strata of village society through a series of terrible events that lacerate old wounds and spotlight the dysfunction of this community. The memories among the older generation as to the part each played in the years of the strike remain painfully fresh, and they taint the lives of the younger generation in multiple ways. 

Even at the start of Sherwood,  the most benign-seeming of events – kids playing in the street, friends (and enemies) celebrating a wedding – have sinister overtones. Within the first hour, Graham lets us deeply into the lives of more than a dozen characters, so that when one of them is brutally slain right outside their own house, we become emotionally involved.  The same goes for DCS Ian St. Clair (David Morrissey), a glum but efficient police detective, who is put in charge of the case and finds himself investigating his friends and neighbors. 

Things get ever more complex as the plot unfolds, but the brilliance of the cast and Graham’s script make the whole thing feel effortless. As tends to inevitably happen in these sorts of tales, circumstances prompt a call to Scotland Yard, and DI Kevin Salisbury (Robert Glenister), a down-on-his-heels detective who had his own part to play in the strike, is ordered down to Nottinghamshire to assist the police. Salisbury and St. Clair have some heavy shared history, which is slowly revealed in flashbacks. Still, they must find a way to work together as the bow-and-arrow wielding assailant strikes again and again. And then another murder occurs, under different but no less shocking circumstances, and the tension mounts. 

About that cast –  it is chock full of amazing actors whom you absolutely have seen in one Masterpiece Theatre production or another and deeply love, even if you can’t for the life of you remember their names. Those folks from Downton Abbey, that lady from Inspector Morse, the guy you loved to hate in The Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby . . . they’re all there! Trying to name all the great performances here got me in as deep hot water as when I was trying to skim through the plot, but I’ll try and list some of my favorites. 

In addition to Morrissey and Glenister, who anchor the show, there’s Clare Holman as Morrissey’s wife; the remarkable Lesley Manville and Claire Rushbrook play sisters Julie and Cathy, who were once inseparable but are now estranged because Julie is married to former striker Gary (Alun Armstrong) while Cathy wed a “scab” named Fred (Kevin Doyle). Joanna Froggett (the loveable Anna from Downton) gives off a very different vibe as a ruthless politician and new bride. Adeel Akhtar nearly steals the show as Froggett’s grieving father-in-law. Then there is the local “poor trash” family, the Sparrows: Mickey (Philip “Inspector Japp” Jackson), his wife Daphne (Lorraine Ashbourne) and their two sons. 

The show is beautifully directed and filmed by a committee of talented individuals, and the score, which includes haunting folk songs from the mines, ratchets up both the suspense and emotional weight of the proceedings. Yes, this is a mystery series, but Sherwood is also high historical drama, as it attempts to pull the lid off of how the Thatcher government forever damaged England. Again, I have little knowledge of what went on, but the series explores a fascinating conspiracy theory, which I won’t go into here because it leads to the strongest “whodunit” aspect of the story. Actor Lindsay Duncan makes a powerful cameo appearance halfway through the show as an attorney working for the miners’ union to prove some of these conspiratorial ideas. She meets with our two leading cops and delivers a speech that I want to set down here: 

“God, we’re an old country! Look at this place: so much past. Which means, unfortunately, quite a lot of mistakes. But it’s not the getting things wrong that’s the problem, it’s the sweeping under the carpet of it all and refusing to just bloody look at it and learn from it. When the Thatcher government’s cabinet papers were released under the 30-year rule, even I a mad cynic, needed a stiff drink.  It’s all there in black and white, the Ridley Report, by future Tory Secretary of State. They wanted that strike. They wanted to change the political landscape of this country away from collectivism, towards deregulated market forces and reasonable people can agree or disagree with that shift. The point is, in order to achieve it, They needed a war, they needed to, and I quote, ‘Provoke a strike in nationalized industries.’ And they picked coal and they won. And this country changed forever.”

I’d be really interested in hearing from my British friends about this speech and the ideas behind it. So much of what Duncan’s character describes can be attributed to things currently happening in my own country, and the series doubles down on that feeling as it explores the anger spinning out of control throughout the village, evidenced in both the killer’s motive and on everyone’s need to find a cause, to lay blame, for all the ills and ill-feelings that have beset them. It takes one brave man, St. Clair’s brother, a former cop who was horribly injured during the strikes and has spent the past thirty years estranged from his brother, to set the record straight about blame: 

“No one, no one did this to me, it were an accident. That’s it, that’s all. That’s not a good enough story, is it? There’s nowhere to put your anger then. The blame.”

The story builds to a powerful climax and then takes its time in the best of ways to come to a perfect ending. Which is why I greet the news that Sherwood has been renewed for a second season with mixed feelings. Do we really want or need more? And if so, can we take a lesson from the mistakes of American series? I have read that the producers have gathered an equally fine cast comprised of veterans from Season One and a whole new group of actors for the new series. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. 

And now, I suppose I’d better spend some time with Jeremy Brett . . .