The Supernatural Crime Thriller Everyone's Binging On Netflix
There's a new supernatural crime thriller heating up Netflix's top 10 list, and it comes with a Holmesian twist. The Victorian teen drama The Irregulars debuted on March 26, and it's already garnering quite the fan base thanks to its mix of scares and romance. But the show also stands out because it's an unconventional Sherlock Holmes adaptation.
While there's no shortage of Sherlock Holmes stories out there, The Irregulars adds something new to the conversation by not being centered on the legendary detective. Instead, the show focuses on the street kids who Holmes employs to help him gather information in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories. The kids at the center of the series are Bea (Thaddea Graham), a tough leader with trust issues, her younger sister Jessie (Darci Shaw), their friends Spike (McKell David) and Billy (Jojo Macari), and Queen Victoria's youngest son, Prince Leopold (Harrison Osterfield).
At the start of the series, Jessie is being plagued by nightmares which are pointing her toward a series of strange occurrences gripping London. As her nightmares intensify, John Watson (Royce Pierreson) enlists Bea and the rest of the group to help him solve a series of dangerous supernatural mysteries connected to a much larger threat to the world.
The Irregulars is a Sherlock Holmes story that's not actually about Sherlock
Sherlock (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) is actually a key part of the overall story, but he doesn't appear on-screen until halfway through the season, and The Irregulars is a better show for it. At this point, the famed consulting detective's story has been told dozens of times, which makes it hard to add anything new to his tale. However, the characters surrounding Holmes are just begging to be fleshed out — which is exactly what this clever series does.
With Sherlock taking a backseat to the teens, The Irregulars instead focuses on other things like the prickly dynamic that develops between Bea and Watson, Jessie's realization that she might have supernatural abilities of her own, and the show's genuinely frightening monsters of the week.
It's clear series creator Tom Bidwell was heavily influenced by The X-Files. Right from the start, the show goes all in on the scares with a Bird Man who steals babies and a truly inspired nightmare version of The Tooth Fairy. But the so-called "monsters" are never exactly what they seem, which only adds to the show's appeal.
Ultimately, if you love The X-Files, the larger Sherlock Holmes canon, and a dash of good old-fashioned teen angst, then The Irregulars should be your next Netflix binge.