created for TV by Tom Bidwell
This is the first review of a television show I've written in the time of the pandemic, and even though I've binged hours' worth of Netflix programs, many of them old, this is the first time I've felt the need to really speak out about one. I've already reviewed a handful of their movies, but this is the first series that I've had particularly strong feelings about ... because it's a giant, stinking turd.
I'm departing from my usual practice of looking up the names of cast and crew on IMDB, save for series lead Thaddea Graham who plays Bea, whose performance, in my opinion is probably the sole redeeming factor of the series, and series creator Tom Bidwell, for the simple reason that I need someone on whom to pin this desecration. I just don't feel like naming anyone else.
For the uninitiated, the "irregulars" are an unspecified group of street children who periodically appeared in Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes" books and stories. They helped Holmes and Watson gather much-needed information on their cases because they could go places that the famed detective and his loyal colleague could not. The potential for stories of their adventures was there; a good writer could imagine all of the tales between tales that the irregulars could tell, how they helped Holmes solve this case or that.
Rather than fulfilling that potential, however, this series brings the titular "irregulars" front and center in the only way that lazy, incompetent revisionists know how: by pulling down their britches and taking a steaming dump on Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.
It starts off well enough, the irregulars are a plucky bunch, consisting of street urchin Bea (Graham), her half-sister Jessie, their friends Billy and Spike, and, oddly enough, crown prince Leopold who sneaks out of Buckingham Palace to join their group after being smitten with Bea when she picks a fight with his bodyguard. It's an interesting enough set-up, and the presence of a royal who conceals his identity among commoners, if a little bit hackneyed, creates a fair amount of intrigue.
When Watson recruits Bea and her crew to help solve mysteries, however, none of which have anything to do with Conan Doyle's stories, it all starts going horribly wrong.
The mysteries center around a supernatural event that the characters dub "the rip" which refers a tear in reality, and deal exclusively in paranormal events. This deviation from the source material, which instantly identifies this series as a period-piece knock-off of Netflix's own hit show Stranger Things, was a bit eyeroll-inducing, but it was not the real problem.
No, the real problem is that almost from his very first appearance, John Watson is depicted as a thoroughly unlikeable, antagonistic character who spends the majority of the series' eight episodes butting heads with Bea. He becomes an obstacle the characters must overcome, and even late in the story when he is supposedly redeemed, it seems very clear that the writer just doesn't like him.
Holmes is depicted as an over-the-hill drug addict who spends most of the series laid up in bed in a drug-addled stupor, occasionally vomiting, but given that it's not that far-removed from his addiction as depicted not just in the books but in other, more faithful adaptations like the BBC series written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss and starring the incomparable Benedict Cumberbatch, it's not that far a stretch.
The vilification of John Watson, however, is basically unforgivable, and while I was almost willing to recommend this series on the basis of the appealing female lead in the form of Bea and her plucky crew, the fact that the writer needed to trample on existing property to make their leads stand out means this series deserves a hard pass.
4/10
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