Season one of The Irregulars, a new young adult mystery series set in the universe inhabited by gentleman detective Sherlock Holmes, arrived on Netflix on March 26, as reported by The A.V. Club. Daniel Fienberg, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, describes the show as an energetic, genre-melding adventure set in Victorian England: “[Think] Sherlock Holmes… meets Stranger Things meets Bridgerton… with shades of various CW dramas and just the smallest dash of The Crown,” via his review.
The Irregulars sidelines Holmes (Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Indian Summers) and his partner Dr. Watson (Royce Pierreson, Wanderlust) for the most part and focuses instead on the Baker Street Irregulars, London street gang with whom the duo cooperates: “The titular characters are a gang of scrappy street kids… who eke out a living in London’s grimy underbelly… [But] the teen sleuths are not cracking ordinary criminal cases. Instead, they must battle the dark, supernatural forces at work in… [a] horror-infused reimagining of Victorian London,” via CNN. The program is created by Tom Bidwell (Watership Down, My Mad Fat Diary).
The Baker Street Irregulars were introduced in the first novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (The Lost World, The Parasite) to feature his Sherlock Holmes character, 1887’s A Study in Scarlet. The gang went on to appear in Holmes’s second adventure, The Sign of Four from 1890. In 1893, Conan Doyle wrote the Irregulars into one more Holmes mystery, short story titled The Adventure of the Crooked Man. The Netflix series expresses a different vision of the characters than Conan Doyle’s own. The Baker Street Irregulars that turn up in the pages of Conan Doyle’s fiction, to wit, are exclusively male, whereas their leader in the Netflix series is tough-as-nails Bea (Thaddea Graham, The Letter for the King), who is one of two young women in the gang, according to Entertainment Weekly. Graham posted picture of herself posing with several of her cast-mates to her Instagram with a caption that encourages people to binge the show on Netflix:
The other performers in the photo portray the remaining members of The Baker Street Irregulars: Bea’s sensitive younger sister Jessie (Darci Shaw, Judy), temperamental Billy (Jojo Macari, Sex Education), charismatic goof Spike (McKell David, Don’t Grow Up) and Queen Victoria’s youngest son, hemophilic Prince Leopold (Harrison Osterfield, Catch-22), according to Entertainment Weekly.
In an exclusive interview with Esquire, Osterfield spoke about the possibility of second season of The Irregulars: “The great thing about the series is that it wraps up a lot of things, but it also leaves everything a bit open-ended as well. So there is massive scope [sic] to explore those relationships and narratives that have been left in the final episode. So we can just hope that people get behind the show and connect with the characters,” via Esquire.
The first eight episodes of The Irregulars are available to stream via Netflix.