Howzat, Holmes? Putting a new spin on Sherlock
THERE’S nothing regular about the Sherlock Holmes played by Henry Lloyd-Hughes in The irregulars, a top- trending series on netflix.
His Holmes is a crackhead whose powers of deduction are reserved mainly for finding his next fix. ‘Yes, he’s drug-addled,’ the 35- year- old actor agreed. ‘He’s fallen.’
He said that he and the show’s writer Tom Bidwell had ‘deconstructed’ Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary private detective for the thriller, which is packed with supernatural goingson and jump- out- of-yourseat shocks.
The irregulars is set in an apocalyptic Victorian London, where a rip in the fabric of time (stick with me) has allowed evil to seep into the city.
The oscar-winning hair and make-up designer Lucy Sibbick covered Lloyd-Hughes’s body with tattoos and made his face pale and sallow, like a Sixties rocker on acid, to play the secretive sleuth. ‘ This is the Sherlock for right now,’ Lloyd-Hughes joked, ‘ but it’s an accident, because Tom Bidwell didn’t know what the world would be like when he wrote it. Aren’t we all a little bit broken, because of the pandemic?’
The show is engrossing in large part because of the way Lloyd-Hughes’s ego-inflated Sherlock interacts with Dr Watson ( Royce Pierreson) — and with the gang of street kids (led by Thaddea graham and Darci Shaw, who play siblings Bea and Jessie) nicknamed The irregulars. Some of the first season’s most poignant scenes involve Lloyd-Hughes and Shaw. ‘There’s a family and romantic conflict in his world,’ he told me cautiously, wary of giving away any spoilers.
i’ve long been a fan of Lloyd-Hughes; way before he popped up in The inbetweeners and the movie version of Anna Karenina (and more recently, indian Summers, Killing Eve and The English game).
He was nominated for an outstanding newcomer honour in the 2010 Evening Standard Theatre Awards for performances in Posh at the Royal Court, and Rope at the Almeida.
That creative streak came in handy when he inherited cricket outfitters n.E. Blake from his grandmother.
The firm, founded by his great-grandfather, specialises in heritage sportswear and when i dial in on Zoom, he’s actually busy finishing off an order for a client. ‘This is my life,’ he said, mock seriously. ‘Customer service.’