'The Irregulars' — release date, plot, cast, trailer and everything you need to know about Netflix’s supernatural Sherlock Holmes thriller

The cast of The Irregulars
Harrison Osterfield, Thaddea Graham, Darci Shaw, Royce Pierreson and Jojo Macari star in The Irregulars. (Image credit: Netflix)

Netflix’s much-anticipated new thriller The Irregulars will offer a very different take on Sherlock Holmes.

The series centres on a group of teenage tearaways who help the detective and his associate Dr John Watson, but a supernatural force brings them into terrible danger…

Here’s everything we know about The Irregulars

The Irregulars release date on Netflix

The Irregulars will be available from Friday March 26 on Netflix. It's 8 parts.

What’s it about?

The drama, penned by Tom Bidwell, whose credits include My Mad Fat Diary and Watership Down, is set in Victorian London and follows a gang of youngsters known as The Irregulars, based on the street urchins The Baker Street Irregulars, who appeared in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories. But when they are called on to help Watson and his mysterious associate Holmes solve a case, they find themselves trying to save London from a chilling otherworldly power.

"In my head, it is not another Sherlock Holmes adaptation," says Bidwell. The gang are our main access point, we go in through their experience into this unexpected world."

Who’s in it?

Thaddea Graham and The Irregulars

The Irregulars confer over their latest case. (Image credit: Netflix)

Us and The Letter for the King’s Thaddea Graham plays the gang’s spirited leader Bea, while The Bay’s Darci Shaw is her sister Jessie, Sex Education’s Jojo Macari is their friend Billy, Snatch’s McKell David is Spike and Catch-22’s Harrison Osterfield is Leopold.

The Witcher’s Royce Pierreson is Watson and Killing Eve’s Henry Lloyd-Hughes is Holmes. The Wire's Clarke Peters also appears as The Linen Man.

Is there a trailer?

Yes, in an atmospheric teaser, an ominous voice says, "A darkness has come to London, something moves through the streets like the shadow of a nightmare, it eviscerates all who stand against it."

After shots of a bright light whizzing over a map of London and newspapers declaring "Demonic Murder Stuns Police", the five members of the gang are shown encountering some strange figures.

The voice goes on to claim, "Now all hope rests with these unlikely few. If they fail, there will be more terror, there will be more death. You think you have seen horror? You know nothing of what it is to be afraid”, as the camera goes up the steps to the door of 221B Baker Street…

Caren Clark

Caren has been a journalist specializing in TV for almost two decades and is a Senior Features Writer for TV Times, TV & Satellite Week and What’s On TV magazines and she also writes for What to Watch.


Over the years, she has spent many a day in a muddy field or an on-set catering bus chatting to numerous stars on location including the likes of Olivia Colman, David Tennant, Suranne Jones, Jamie Dornan, Dame Judi Dench and Sir Derek Jacobi as well as Hollywood actors such as Glenn Close and Kiefer Sutherland.


Caren will happily sit down and watch any kind of telly (well, maybe not sci-fi!), but she particularly loves period dramas like Call the Midwife, Downton Abbey and The Crown and she’s also a big fan of juicy crime thrillers from Line of Duty to Poirot.


In her spare time, Caren enjoys going to the cinema and theatre or curling up with a good book.