Netflix’s next Sherlock Holmes project, The Irregulars, has just received a new teaser highlighting the dark supernatural adventures that are yet to come in the eight-part series. The Irregulars, scheduled to start broadcasting on March 26, follows a group of “troubled street teenagers” who are “manipulated to solve crimes” by the “sinister Doctor Watson”, according to Netflix.
The Irregulars is based in part on Baker Street Irregulars, a group of street kids from Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes novels who helped Watson and the famous consultant detective get a view of London’s street level and deal with some of the laborious work of solving mysteries. The Netflix version, created by Tom Bidwell, seems to take things in a much more moody and scary direction.
The Baker Street Irregulars have appeared in some Sherlock Holmes films and television shows over the years (recently reworked as a “Homeless Network” on the BBC Sherlock), but The Irregulars‘ The choice to position Holmes and Watson as people taking advantage of these children seems ripe for some interesting stories. Bidwell summed up the idea in an interview with BBC:
Sherlock Holmes had a group of street kids that he used to help him gather clues, so our series would be what would happen if Sherlock was a drug addict and a delinquent and the kids solved the whole case while he took the credit.
The Irregulars follows Netflix’s recent success with Enola Holmes, focusing on Sherlock Holmes’ younger sister. The film prompted Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate to sue Netflix for portraying Holmes’ personality as very emotional, an aspect of the character that they claim was not invented until later Doyle novels that are not in the public domain.
The lawsuit has been shelved, but it is a funny coincidence that the indifferent, indescribable and icy Sherlock Holmes, who probably would not care about the supernatural danger that the Irregulars will face, is also Holmes in the public domain.
The Irregulars‘ The eight-episode series debuts on Netflix on March 26, 2021.