John Dolan: The best TV series of the year, and a Cork actor steals the show

When you’re watching a TV series or film, and hear the unmistakable Leeside burr, do you react like me? Do you point at the screen in delight and shout: “That’s a Cork accent!”?

Phew, I knew I wasn’t alone.

In recent years, that little yelp of recognition has become commonplace, as actors and actresses from the Rebel County have excelled in the thespian world.

I was watching a thrilling new drama last week when the finger-pointing happened again. And I have to report that there is a new name to add to the Cork acting canon.

The series is called Young Sherlock and was released on Amazon Prime last month. It’s easily the finest TV series I have seen so far this year.

Not only that, but the Cork actor in it, Dónal Finn, steals the show from a host of other brilliant talents.

If you hadn’t heard his name before, I’m positive it will be up in lights soon alongside the likes of Rebel luminaries Cillian Murphy, Éanna Hardwicke, Fiona Shaw, and Sarah Greene.

Young Sherlock is an eight-part mystery drama set in Victorian England, inspired by Andrew Lane’s book series of that name, and produced and directed by Guy Ritchie - Madonna’s ex.

It reimagines the early life of Sherlock Holmes as he begins to cut his teeth in the world of crime-solving. Finn, 30, from North Cork, plays the future detective’s arch-rival James Moriarty - but with a twist.

When this series starts, Holmes and Moriarty become the best of friends when they meet at Oxford University, and solve crimes together using their combined genius.

Finn’s portrayal of Moriarty is superb - he plays him as a wildly unpredictable, outspoken, and impulsive Irish man, contrasting sharply with the well-to-do Englishness of the teenage Holmes.

Young Sherlock is compelling, twisty, and great fun, and boasts a top-notch cast - including Colin Firth as the university boss and Joseph Fiennes as Sherlock’s father. Max Irons, son of Sinéad Cusack and Jeremy Irons, plays Sherlock’s brother Mycroft, and Dubliner Simon Delaney plays a wizened old detective who wears a cape and deer-stalker (no prizes for guessing who that influences...)

All of them are excellent, as is Hero Fiennes Tiffin - nephew of Joseph Fiennes - as Sherlock.

But our own Dónal puts in a mesmerising performance that leaves the rest standing.

Don’t just take my word for it.

The reviewer of Young Sherlock for The Guardian said Moriarty “blows the lead off the screen” in a “magnificently assured turn from Dónal Finn”. They later added: “It doesn’t help that Fiennes Tiffin has been teamed with the explosively charismatic Finn, whose presence here reduces everyone within the blast zone to a smoking hillock of moustache.”

The Irish Times said the role of Moriarty was “one of those parts where the villain truly gets the best lines,” adding: “Don’t be surprised if Finn becomes Ireland’s next acting superstar.”

Indeed, if there is any justice, Finn’s charismatic portrayal of Moriarty should catapult him into the big time - just like it did for another Irish actor, Andrew Scott, who played the Victorian villain in the Sherlock series that starred Benedict Cumberbatch.

There has long been a consensus that Arthur Conan Doyle - who had Irish blood himself - portrayed Moriarty as an Irish character, and there is even a theory that the author based him on UCC mathematician George Boole.

While Scott played the character as a south Dubliner, Finn leaned on his own strong accent for the role in Young Sherlock.

To my ears, some of his sentences sounded pure Roy Keane, but he actually told the Irish Times in an interview that he went a little further west for his Moriarty voice

“I had some people in my head that I think influenced me in developing what the character’s voice is,” he said. “They would be from the southwest.”

Specifically, Finn decided to channel the late Kerry actor and storyteller Éamon Kelly for the role.

“He was very old school and theatrical in a way. I wanted to harness some part of that story-telling quality. Moriarty is able to hold people’s attention in such an amazing way, and that’s how the seanchaithe worked as well. They were incredible storytellers.”

Finn grew up in Dromina, near Charleville, close to the Cork-Limerick border, one of eight children raised on a farm.

He honed a long-held passion for drama and musical theatre, and performed in community halls around Cork, taking part in pantos in Fermoy, along with musicals in the Opera House.

He told The Irish Times he was eternally grateful for the support his parents gave him to help him pursue his acting dream in the UK.

“I worked in a supermarket in Kanturk, which was the town I went to school in. I was there for a year,” he said.

“A lot of my friends had gone off to college in Cork, Limerick, and Dublin. That was a year of working and saving money to fly over and back for auditions at drama schools.”

He ended up becoming a student at Lamda, the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art.

Finn told the Irish Examiner in 2023: “I think a goal of mine would be to repay my mother for every ounce of petrol that she ever put in the car to drive me to Mallow, Charleville, Cork, Kanturk. Pantos in Fermoy, musicals in the Opera House, drama lessons out in Ballincollig...

“If I could go as far as to repay her for all the hours and the miles that she put in that Mitsubishi Space Wagon... I’m eternally grateful to both my parents, for such wild and almost I would say daft support!”

Hopefully, that day won’t be too far away as his career progresses.

There is no word yet on a second season of Young Sherlock - although the fact it set a new record for the most watched Amazon Prime Series trailer in its first seven days in February is evidence it will happen, as well as the positive reviews.

With seven additional books in the series, there is plenty of source material for the story to continue

Finn’s CV also includes a role in another Amazon Prime series - fantasy The Wheel Of Time - and in hit BBC drama SAS Rogue Heroes, made by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight. He appeared in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore, The Witcher, and How To Build a Girl, and last year starred in a West End production, Hadestown.

You can currently also see him in the cast of BBC period drama The Other Bennet Sister.