Featuring Victorian-Era backdrop,  a helping of magic, and a sprinkle of poverty. 


It doesn't matter what you expect of Netflix's latest drama mystery, The Irregulars is guaranteed to give you less. It's a reimagining of the story of Watson and Homes but with scant appearances of them and when they do appear, it's a dull shadow of what we're used to. What we do get, are five teenagers bumbling around old London trying to solve mysterious supernatural crimes they have absolutely no understanding of at the pull of their puppeteer Dr. John Watson (played by Royce Pierreson) who seems to be lacking the brilliance of his title and reputation. 

The characters mention monsters so often that you expect literal monsters but again the show is stellar at dishing out disappointments as there are no literal monsters, simply regular humans armed with the power of the supernatural and dishing out misfortune to others because of their broken hearts. Monsters, you shall not see, but inconsistent character sob stories are aplenty. 

The Prince in shining blue coat (Prince Leopold played by Harrison Osterfield) who has no business walking about at night because of his chronic illness, hemophilia,  but somehow wanders about with a band of street urchins while absolutely no one (not even his fastidious caretaker) searches for him - an actual Prince of England wandering around unsupervised in the poorest parts of London. We see a glimpse where he walks a couple of meters and then has to rest because of his perilous health but shortly after that this premise is completely dismissed as we see him walk, run and even jump off a one-story building. Given his regular speeches of how broken he is and how his caretaker constantly tries to make him do nothing, I fully expected his bones to crumble into dust after that jump. But alas, he was able to limp off into the trenches of London and into the arms of his poor friends.


The Irregulars also has a supposedly gifted ipsissimus  (Jess played by Darcie Shaw) who seems to have no interest in finding the origins of her powers or even honing this gift. She is content to lay around the house, have bad dreams and dreamily wander into the maws of danger. She had a literal man in white who could have taught her so much but she seemed gratified being the weird one as she never asked any insightful question but always found her voice when it's time to say " I want to be like everyone else waaaah". 


When Jess the powerful ipsissimus does decide to do something, it's to delve deeper into her nightmares (wow what a brilliant idea) and to put her absolute trust in a mysterious man in white who she knows as nothing other than The Linen Man. The blinding intelligence portrayed by this group employed by Watson leaves absolutely no room for doubt as to Watson's brilliance in choosing allies or more realistically, pawns.

But wait, this show is not all bad. Not even the Tiktok acting of most of these actors can distract you from the potential of the show but the characters are simply not interesting enough. I simply do not care that a prince who has lived all his life sheltered and protected is willing to risk his death for a bold girl or that a young girl (Bea played by Thaddea Graham) has lost so much, she treats her younger sister like a porcelain doll and feels responsible for the band of urchins or the boy who has pined over his childhood friend for so long but says nothing because he's scared of losing her and let's not forget the token black group member whose job is to break into peoples homes and be "the glue" and who is literally the only character in this entire series without a backstory (and even the villains got one!) Individually these all seem like elements to a great story but when you put it all together in such a dreadfully boring manner and sprinkle poverty on it, you have a lot of things but not my interest.


The mysteries in each episode, though unoriginal, are quite interesting but The Irregulars spends so much time dwelling on the trivialities of the teenagers' lives that the most interesting parts are over in minutes and we're back to the whining of the young crimefighters and their mostly stiff dialogue. 

The biggest mystery of this show is not who opened the rip the first and second time, the source of magic, or why Bea is so completely enamored by a woman she barely remembers- the biggest mystery is the source of the boundless confidence these teenagers seem to possess as they constantly run into the embrace of danger armed with naught but their arrogance and the earth-shattering belief that they are somehow favored by the universe. The audacity with which Bea interrogates murderers and commands them to give up makes me wonder if she has concealed weapons somewhere or maybe a power that's been hidden from us thus far but which only she is aware. 

But it all works out in the end as The Irregulars 2.0 end up defeating great evil with a stick blindingly illuminated by the light of togetherness. How beautifully ridiculous.

The fact that these crime-solving teens who took up a sizable chunk of the screen time are not the titular irregulars is so fitting of a show that promises you a feast and then offers you one steamed basil sprinkled with paprika and cinnamon.