Murder, mushrooms and Sherlock: Irish storyteller Brendan Foley on a fascinating wild mix

SBS Australia

19-05-2025

Amelia Rojas (Blu Hunt) and Sherlock (David Thewlis). Credit: Starlings Entertainment Arthur Conan Doyle's witheringly insistent detective Sherlock Holmes has worn many faces since he first appeared in the author's 1887 novel A Study in Scarlet . The 221B Baker Street-based sleuth was first depicted on screen by an unknown actor in Arthur Marvin's 30-second silent film Sherlock Holmes Baffled at the turn of the 20 th century. Danish actor Viggo Larsen stepped into the role a few years later for the Nordisk Film Company. Since then, we've had everyone from Peter Cushing to Michael Caine, Ian McKellen to Benedict Cumberbatch. Big, no-doubt luxurious leather, shoes to fill, then. Belfast-born journalist-turned screen storyteller was well aware of the weight on his shoulders when creating magnificently fun show, . 'Sherlock's had the most outings in television history, and that's a double-edged sword,' Foley says. How do you bring a fresh perspective to such an enduring story? By upending everything Sherlock thinks he knows. Dr Watson and their landlady, Mrs Hudson, are missing, and Holmes is no longer at the top of his game. 'I thought, 'Wouldn't it be more interesting to meet him as a lion in winter?'' Foley says. 'That's pretty hard for poor old Sherlock, who has been lauded and has a bit of a Napoleon complex.'
Depicted by the inimitable David Thewlis, Sherlock's also confronted with the daughter he never knew he had in kick-ass Amelia Rojas, a revelatory turn from Blu Hunt. 'Hats off to Blu,' Foley says. 'It's not easy to act opposite a world-class character actor like David, but she more than holds her own.' 'Sherlock is a massive experimenter,' Foley says. 'He's got that encyclopaedic, scientific inquiring mind and infamously experiments with substances. So, what if he possibly, just once, experimented with what is his rather dysfunctional version of love?' Of course, Sherlock refuses to believe Amelia, denying a dalliance with her murdered mother, Lucia (Savonna Spracklin), a First Nations woman with an inventor's curiosity. Amelia's pretty pissed he won't take her word for it, particularly as she had to beg, borrow and steal to cross the Pacific, find Sherlock and gain his help uncovering her killer.
'If Amelia does turn out to be a blood relative of Sherlock, then the one thing you know is that half of her is Holmes' stuffy Anglo-Saxon, while her mother has this fascinating First Nations and Californian-Spanish background,' Foley says. Amelia may be a fish out of water, but she's sharp as a tack and handy with a gun and hand-to-hand combat. Foley pits them against a crime gang with an insidiously global reach, symbolically picking at a thread from A Study in Scarlet by leaving a strand of scarlet string at every crime scene. Sherlock also consults the imprisoned Professor Moriarty, his twisted frenemy depicted by a delightfully devious Dougray Scott. 'Sherlock and Moriarty are classic 19 th -century big beasts, but they're both at the end of that cycle,' Foley says. 'After the First World War, industrialised conflict is creeping towards them and there are these explosions of technology, like the telephone, changing the way things have been done for a very long time.' Can they keep up, with help from Amelia? And just who is the handsome Australian stranger freshly arrived in London, having been transported as a light-fingered kid? Invisible Boys star Joe Klocek depicts him with gung-ho gusto. 'The late-Victorian era wouldn't have been the classic transportation period, but it was definitely happening to anyone British society wanted rid of, right up until shamefully recently,' Foley says.
With a scintillating mystery, villainous skulduggery and action aplenty, Sherlock & Daughter is stupendous fun with broad appeal. 'There are two quite different audiences,' Foley says. 'One is the classic Sherlock Holmes audience, and the other is much younger and interested in possible romance. Ultimately, what would the relationship be like between someone like Holmes and Amelia, who just crash-lands into his world?'
With the source novel by Antti Tuomainen covered, how do you continue the story of mushroom entrepreneur Jaakko (Jussi Vatanen, ), who was slowly, inescapably dying after being deliberately poisoned by fatal fungi in season one? Foley and co-writer Markku Flink take a wild and wonderful swing. 'Season one was essentially 'How do you choose to spend your time when you've been sleepwalking your way through life?'' Foley says. 'Season two is about if you should find yourself unexpectedly still alive, what would you do to stay alive?'
Foley relished the chance to expand the show. 'Antti has that really specific weirdness of, say, the Coen brothers, which was my guiding star on season one,' he says. 'Working together with the same characters for season two but without that brilliant superstructure was all about taking totally left-field ideas that were a joy to write.' Especially Jaakko. 'He's got a sort of slightly Dilbert corporate sensibility and takes his mushrooms very seriously,' Foley says. 'But he's also a really decent human being in a world several sizes too big for him, trying to make sense of it, and I think that's why audiences root for him.'
Viewers also root for Lia (Sofia Pekkari), a Finnish woman drawn into a clandestine group, led by Pihla Viitala's Mira, battling the rise of a far-right politician (John Simm) in . Foley contributed writing to the London-set, Nordic-flavoured crime thriller.
How does a Belfast boy wind up being a go-to writer on Nordic noir shows? 'I had a few friends who were Nordic producers back in the day, just at the stage that they were starting to be very outward looking,' Foley says. 'They had a reputation for being cold and unremittingly gloomy, and, in a way, that's what people liked. But they were also looking for quirky differences. So I became the guy who did Nordic noir, who was Irish for some inexplicable reason.' Much like the participants of , Foley's unusual story has deeply unexpected roots. 'I was fortunate enough to have a very deep DNA dive, and in the year 925, virtually all of my ancestors were Icelandic Viking Celts, so there you go.' Foley's background in internationally-focused business journalism helped hone his interest in other cultures. So he's stoked SBS picked up Sherlock & Daughter . 'There's so much fantastic TV on SBS that you'd never have had the chance to see before,' Foley says. 'It's that mixture of a global view, but always with interesting specifics.' Sherlock & Daughter is airing Thursdays on SBS. New episodes also arrive each Thursday at SBS On Demand.
The Man Who Died season one is streaming at SBS On Demand. Season 2 arrives Thursday 22 May.
Cold Courage is streaming at SBS On Demand.
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