I didn't think it could be done, but the Netflix series The Irregulars managed it. In the category "most spurious use of the Sherlock Holmes brand", it snatches the prize from Enola Holmes. Yes, believe it or not, The Irregulars has even less to do with Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective and his world than Enola Holmes did.
Funnily enough, I still kinda liked it. I certainly preferred it vastly to the awful Enola film. The Irregulars has likeable young leads, a solid supporting cast (with guest star turns from the likes of Rory McCann aka The Hound and Anna Maxwell Martin) and a script that is a great deal tighter and funnier than Enola's. True, said script is shamelessly modern. Also, Victorian London is depicted as a multicultural haven where people of every skin colour are prettily represented in every echelon of society. (I won't pretend I like being lectured on historical racism, but why is it suddenly politically correct to make believe it never existed?) But this is a show of supernatural happenings, so I can - once again - reach for the "alternate reality" explanation and give it a pass when it comes to historical accuracy. It doesn't matter much that Victorian London is nothing like Victorian London. But when it comes to what the series does to Holmes and co., I have to be severe on it, because this is no way to treat a franchise.
The series is clearly inspired by the "Baker Street Irregulars", boys living on the street who, in the original Conan Doyle stories, helped Holmes and Watson get information which respectable gentlemen couldn't easily get hold of. It is also based on graphic novels - graphic novels seem to have some form when it comes to playing fast and loose with legendary characters. Anyway, the Irregulars here aren't just boys, don't you believe it. There are two boys and two girls, and the leader of the group - tough and chippy Bea - is one of the girls. Her sister, Jessie, gradually reveals special powers, like being able to dive into peoples' minds when touching them. It's not much fun for Jessie being special, as she is increasingly troubled by nightmares and afraid of going mad. When a very strange bout of kidnappings takes place in London, Doctor Watson enlists an unwilling Bea to look into them along with her gang. The cases only get weirder from there, but Watson makes it clear that opting out is not an option. So the quartet struggles on, with the help of a handsome, if frail, prince in disguise who has taken a shine to Bea.
Wait a bit, you may ask. How come Holmes and Watson (not that we see Holmes for the first half of the series) are looking into supernatural events and trying out all kinds of hocus pocus? Isn't Sherlock Holmes a champion of cold rationality, and the last person to get mixed up in mystic stuff? (I could see Conan Doyle himself getting into this, but Sherlock - no.) Well may you wonder. Let me just briefly summarise how some famous Conan Doyle characters are presented in this series:
Doctor John Watson: Cold, arrogant and shifty for the most part of the series (he does soften towards the end).
Mycroft Holmes: Polite and rather timid. He still works for the Government, though, so there's that.
Inspector Lestrade: A religious fanatic, horrible to Jessie.
Mrs Hudson: A hard-bitten slum landlady, not better acquainted with Holmes and Watson than with her other tenants. I bet you'd never thought you'd hear a Mrs Hudson suggest to a young male tenant that there were "alternative ways" for him to pay his rent (I'm afraid this made me smile rather than tut-tut).
Sherlock Holmes: The man himself is a wreck when we meet him - nothing unusual in that, many Holmeses we've seen over the years have been wrecks. In his heyday, though, he was something of a flamboyant swashbuckler - more Brigadier Gerard than Holmes. Most of his actions are motivated by romantic love for Bea's and Jessie's mother, who was lost in "the Rip" between this world and another one years ago.
I know, right?
While nothing, in my view, could have saved Enola Holmes, this series would have gained so much if it had dropped any link with the Holmes franchise and just settled for being an entertaining slice of Gothic mystery primarily aimed at teens. The characters mentioned above aren't uninteresting. The doctor turns out to be more complex than one would initially have guessed and even rather touching. But Watson he ain't, so why call him that? Why do films and shows keep doing this - attaching themselves to famous stories with which they have nothing in common, when they would have been better off going it alone and using freely invented characters?
The answer (apart from following their source material, be it graphic novels or YA novels) is sadly all too apparent. It's to gain viewers. Would I have given a series simply labelled "Teen adventure with a taste of mild Gothic Horror set in a fantasy version of Victorian London" a try? Probably not. But put in a link to Sherlock Holmes, and I'm suckered to try it - and then watch it to the end for its own sake, even after I realise I've been tricked. It's not a pretty strategy, and I'm not sure it will work indefinitely. The next time Netflix tries something like this, I for my part will be wary, and check out reviews before I dive in. If they're awful, I'll suspect another Cursed and quite possibly stay away. Which means I'd risk missing out on having an enjoyable time with another The Irregulars.
