I didn’t get to sit down on “opening night” as it were, like I usually do when shows I’m excited to see premiere on streaming channels, my weekend was packed and I kept putting it off for the entire weekend. So come Monday evening, I had a night of nothing to do which meant I could finally sit down and watch The Irregulars. It took two nights because there was no way I could stay up until almost 2am on a Monday night to finish the entire thing. I made it through six episodes with the final two the next evening. I’d been mildly spoiled by a friend who watched it over the weekend and was all but vibrating to discuss it with me. So here I am, a few days later with pages of notes and wisps of scenes still running through my mind.
Warning, while I will try to keep things vague, there are spoilers (which should be fine as by the time this makes the blog, the one week spoiler ban should be lifted) You’ve been warned.
I mean no offense to Nancy Springer and her absolutely wonderful Enola Holmes, because I loved the Netflix interpretation of her first book, but this is not Enola Holmes. It’s dark, it’s gritty, it’s gruesome, which, if one is featuring a series about a group of teenaged “street rats”, it absolutely should be. Beatrice, her sister Jessie, and their found family, Billy, Spike and Leo make up the Irregulars, which as mentioned once and so quick you might miss it, are the second group to be called this. The plot mentioned on IMDB and the Wikipedia page is “a group of teens known as The Irregulars work with Doctor John Watson to solve supernatural crimes while Sherlock Holmes gets credit for their work” and that plot summary is utterly incorrect.
Bea, the unequivocal leader of this group, is the one who is hired by Watson in the beginning but it’s to look at supernatural crimes that “they don’t have time for.', Eventually the series hinges on an overarching issue involving a rift in reality, a supernatural power Jessie has, and Sherlock Holmes himself.
But the further you delve into the series, the more you realize that it’s not just Jessie that has powers. Sure, her powers are supernatural in nature and genetic, but each Irregular has a strength. Bea has compassion, Billy has strength and protection, Spike has the gift of the gab that can grift anyone, and Leo has clout. Beside her powers, Jessie’s strength becomes the tie that binds them all together. Ultimately, the entire theme of the story seemed to be family. Not so much those who share the same blood as you, but the family you find. The people who stand beside you when the actual world is falling down around you. It was about loss, how people deal with that loss differently, it was about love-familial, platonic, and romantic. It was about sacrifice, how much would you sacrifice for the people you love.
SPOILER ALERT!
The only thing I didn’t really like about this show was the bad guy. I was uncomfortable that they chose an American Black man from Louisiana from the late 1890’s/ early 1900’s to portray an almost Baron Samedi-esque character. Not that I wanted Moriarty, because that would’ve been trite but perhaps someone other than a person who could’ve grown up a slave in the South at the time of the first rift.
Of course, there’s so many other things I can talk about regarding this series; the parallels, the mirroring of characters, the discussion of society, the wealthy vs the poor, especially in regards to drug use, the juxtaposition of characters in settings not usually seen in: Mrs. Hudson was both the landlady and the literal mob boss, The Golden Dawn cult and Mycroft Holmes being secret service, Inspector Lestrade being a papist and almost Cotton Matheresque in his hatred of the supernatural. And of course Doctor John Watson and Sherlock Holmes, whom reminded me of the quote by Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight, “either you die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” While the adults are certainly not role models, there is only one true villain in this story...okay two, but one is a run of the mill baddie.
If you’re a fan of Sherlock Holmes pastiches, give this a try. It’s not high art, but then again, neither were the original stories.
