Ripper Street Review - Episode 6 (Spoilers for US)

This week's Ripper Street finally reveals a few of Detective Reid's secrets. Here's Jamie-Lee's review...

This review contains spoilers

1.6 Tournament of Shadows

Now three-quarters of the way through this beautifully bloody journey through the streets of Whitechapel in the months after the serials killings of Jack the Ripper, we are finally offered a brief insight into the background and inner workings of Ripper Street's lead character. Master of the bowler hat and sardonic quip, Detective Inspector Edmund Reid is played by Matthew Macfadyen of Spooks, Mr Darcy and husband of voice of Lara Croft fame. He even does those Marks and Spencers adverts, which is why you may find yourself wanting hot chocolate pudding oozing with cream and lashings of, ohhh, anyway... He has used his brooding skills demonstrably when hiding his feelings of pain about his daughter and somewhat awkward marriage in this gritty series and his MI5 training from Spooks has proved useful for authority, particularly when dishing out the dirty work to his right-hand men Drake and Jackson. He’s also shown that he’s not afraid of a rough and tumble himself when putting Jackson in his place, or giving one or two ruffians or embassy staff a swift backhand.

Ripper Street offers a plethora of on-going interesting characters and sub-plots to keeps viewers entertained alongside each week’s main plot, and this week’s episode is once again completely different from anything we’ve seen in the previous five. The H Division are left dealing with the dock strike of ’89 and rather unpleasant anarchists are stirring up trouble. A bomber is killed in an ‘accidental explosion’ revealing a deadly Communist plot, although as this is Whitechapel and prime time BBC One viewing, all is not what is seems. When Reid thinks everything looks a bit circumspect, he faces a backlash from Special Branch. Not heeding his warnings from above, he comes across something more unpleasant and sinister than the criminals roaming the streets, and far closer to home. In addition, we get a taste of what’s to come in the future storyline, when we discover that Jackson may not be who he say he is at all. Not so happily coerced into going undercover for Reid during the strike, he performs brilliantly, saving Drake’s life in the process. However, how far does and can his acting and betrayal go?

READ MORE: http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/ripper-street/24338/ripper-street-episode-6-review-tournament-of-shadows

Matthew Macfadyen: Ripper Street to return for second series Gritty detective drama set in Victorian London starring Matthew Macfadyen has been a hit on BBC1 and BBC America (GUARDIAN)

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/ripper%20street

Maggie Brown
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 January 2013 08.57 EST


BBC1 has ordered a second series of Ripper Street, the gritty Sunday night drama starring Matthew Macfadyen.

The BBC confirmed that a second, eight-part series was due for broadcast in 2014.

Ripper Street's first series, set in London's East End after the hunt for Jack the Ripper was called off in 1889, has averaged 7.1 million viewers and a 22.9% audience share so far, according to consolidated ratings including seven-day catchup viewing.

Macfadyen features as a police inspector, with Jerome Flynn as his sergeant colleague and Adam Rothenberg an American surgeon and former Pinkerton detective.

The first episode resulted in more than 90 viewers complaining about insensitive scheduling, because of the combination of sex and violence so close to the 9pm watershed.

But critics have praised the production, by Tiger Aspect and Look Out Point, for its authentic depiction of Victorian London, and gritty contrast to traditional costume dramas.

Ripper Street is a BBC Worldwide co-production which airs on BBC America, where it has been the US cable channel's most successful drama apart from Doctor Who.

READ MORE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jan/29/ripper-street-second-series

Ripper Street: BBC gets it right again with this ripping good unsettling yarn JOHN DOYLE The Globe and Mail Published Friday, Jan. 25 2013, 5:00 PM EST Last updated Friday, Jan. 25 2013, 7:23 PM EST

The good, gruesome new Brit drama Ripper Street (Saturday, Space, 9 p.m.) is set in 1889 and yet feels both contemporary and very familiar.

For the umpteenth time in movies and TV, we’re taken back to the era of Jack the Ripper – the filthy, teeming streets of London, brothels, bodices and earnest police officers trying to use new technology and forensic evidence to solve crimes.


The sense of the contemporary was emphatic in the opening episode. The setting was the period when Jack the Ripper seemed to have stopped his killing spree, and viewers first saw a ghoulish bit of tourism unfold – people were being led around East London to see the exact spots where the Ripper’s victims were found. At the same time, there was an avid tabloid press competing for new information about the serial killer.

A body was found. It looked like the Ripper’s work, but was it? It was the task of Police Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen), his Detective Sergeant Drake (Jerome Flynn from Game of Thrones) and Captain Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg), a former Pinkerton detective and U.S. Army surgeon, to determine what was going on.

The seediness and depravity of London during the period was on full display (in the U.K., where Ripper Street has been airing recently on the BBC, there were many complaints from viewers about some gory, blood-soaked scenes), and the series continues to be unafraid to disturb.

The second episode airs on Saturday – you can find the pilot on demand – and it becomes clear that each episode is both an excellent mystery and highlights a key aspect of the period in which it is set. The first episode dwelt much on the arrival of commercial pornography. This one deals with the role of children in the late Victorian period.

READ MORE:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/ripper-street-a-ripping-good-unsettling-yarn/article7861512/

Ripper Street - Episode 2 Preview (BBC AMERICA)

http://www.bbcamerica.com/ripper-street/videos/the-dead-room/

Matthew Macfadyen - Ripper Street Offers Brand New Challenges for Matthew Macfadyen 20 January 2013 (CONTACT MUSIC)

Ripper Street Offers Brand New Challenges for Matthew Macfadyen

BBC America’s Ripper Street – a period series about a cop, tasked with solving crimes in 19th century London, post Jack the Ripper – premiered last night on BBC America.

Marking the occasion, Ripper Street star Matthew Macfadyen discussed the experience of working on the show and getting under the skin of his character and choosing to do a long-term project like the series. For New York Daily News Macfadyen explained that as an actor, he often feels the stress of not being offered work, and then at some point the scripts simply start to pour: “[W]hen the phone doesn’t ring for three weeks, you start thinking, ‘My God, I’ll never work again.’” For him, a long-term contract for a series offered some security in a profession, where stability is inherently lacking.

READ MORE: http://www.contactmusic.com/news/ripper-street-offers-brand-new-challenges-for-matthew-macfadyen_3459775

Ripper Street British Import With Sex and Sleuths By MIKE HALE (NEW YORK TIMES)

Setting a cop show in the slums of East London in 1889 gives you several advantages. Violence, for one: Among the first things we see in “Ripper Street,” a new British drama beginning on Saturday night on BBC America, is an undercover policeman pausing during a bare-knuckle fight to pull an opponent’s tooth out of his hand.


Sex, for another: the two most prominent female characters in the show are prostitutes, or tarts (“taaarts”), in the language of the time. The first episode predictably joins these elements by making a tart the target of violence.

This is not to condemn “Ripper Street,” which has its satisfactions, but to indicate the mind-set at work. As a period police procedural, it’s more successful than “Copper,” set in 1860s New York and also shown on BBC America. But it’s not that much more imaginative; someone wanted a late-Victorian “Law & Order,” and that’s what was delivered.

“Ripper Street” is, however, reasonably clever and sometimes even witty in its depictions of forward-thinking detectives pioneering the forensic methods and investigative procedures that will eventually become the grist for a thousand television shows. And in Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg and particularly Matthew Macfadyen, it has a sharp and appealing group of actors to play its central cop triangle.

The undisputed star of the show is Mr. Macfadyen as Edmund Reid, a detective inspector with crusading instincts who wants both to modernize and to humanize the police force. But he’s not the all-seeing, Holmesian genius so prevalent in current shows, who acts out for 45 minutes before single-handedly solving the mystery.

In a moderately interesting twist, “Ripper Street” splits the glory between Reid and Homer Jackson (Mr. Rothenberg), an American and former Pinkerton agent who has come to London, fleeing some dark secret in his past. Deputized by Reid, Jackson supplies most of the close analysis of fibers, skin and gaping wounds (typically on the bodies of young women, of course) while tweaking the more old-fashioned sensibilities of Reid’s stalwart sergeant, Drake (Mr. Flynn, known here for playing the warrior Bronn in “Game of Thrones”).

The fun of the show comes partly from the interplay among these actors, and partly from the way it juxtaposes the muck and murderousness of the East End shortly after the days of Jack the Ripper (hence the title) with the onset of the modern world.


READ MORE: http://tv.nytimes.com/2013/01/19/arts/television/ripper-street-with-matthew-macfadyen-on-bbc-america.html

Adam Rothenberg Fights Crime On Ripper Street (Access Hollywood)

ACCESS HOLLYWOOD

Ripper Street - Matthew Macfadyen interview (premieres January 19 at 9:00 ET - BBC America)

http://www.bbcamerica.com/ripper-street/videos/inspector-reid/

'Ripper Street' review: Complex characters David Wiegand Updated 4:34 pm, Wednesday, January 16, 2013 (SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE)

As in the original BBC America production "Copper," which is set in New York in the 1860s, early forensic science plays a key role in helping Reid and his team solve crimes. In "Copper," Kevin Corcoran (Tom Weston-Jones) enlists the help of a free slave who is also a doctor, Matthew Freeman (Ato Asandoh), to solve crimes, just as Reid dragoons Jackson here to work on murder cases with him.

The similarities between the two shows don't end there. Corcoran is haunted by the murder of his young daughter, while Reid and his wife, Emily (Amanda Hale), have lost their young daughter as well. Each show also features a cooperative brothel owner, grittily detailed production values and florid, penny-dreadful dialogue.

By the second episode, show creator Richard Warlow ("Mistresses") is borrowing a bit of Charles Dickens in the story of a street urchin convicted of murdering an elderly toy maker and sentenced to die on the gallows in three days. The boy is one of a group of street kids in the employ of a Fagin-like character, who's really much more of a Bill Sikes and out to spring the boy so he can shut him up before he tells the authorities too much. Meanwhile, Reid and his team have to keep the rabid citizen Whitechapel Vigilance Committee from shortstopping the kid's trip to the gallows themselves.

Although each episode focuses on a particular crime, we're hooked as much by the characters and what we still don't know about them. Edmund and Emily have a strained marriage, although they both seem to love each other. He buries the grief over the loss of his daughter in his work, while she spends every waking hour in church. Homer and Long Susan have both turned up in London after escaping some yet-to-be-defined incident back in the United States, which may have involved a name and identity change for Jackson. He can be an invaluable asset to Reid on a murder case, but he's not to be trusted.

"Ripper Street" boasts superb performances, cast and production values, and, beyond the copycat elements, thoughtfully written scripts loaded with surprises and a compellingly complicated moral base: Virtually all the characters are a credible mix of strengths and flaws.

READ MORE: http://www.sfgate.com/tv/article/Ripper-Street-review-Complex-characters-4199509.php#photo-4036998

Matthew Macfadyen & CSI: Victoriana comes alive in ‘Ripper Street’

An abundance of evil permeates “Ripper Street.” The latest British crime drama on BBC America is a mixture of the grittier of Charles Dickens’ novels, bloody fisticuffs, beatings, occasionally explicit sex, profanity and Victorian-period CSI-style investigation.  (NEWS TRIBUNE)
TISH WELLS; MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

 Ripper Street" on BBC America, 9 p.m. January 19th, Detective Sergeant Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn) and Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) pursue crime on the streets of 1889 London with the help of Captain Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg), an American. (TIGER ASPECT/BBC/MCT)

An abundance of evil permeates “Ripper Street.”

The latest British crime drama on BBC America is a mixture of the grittier of Charles Dickens’ novels, bloody fisticuffs, beatings, occasionally explicit sex, profanity and Victorian-period CSI-style investigation.

Oh, and it has an American as well. He smokes a lot.

Straight-laced Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen), and his assistant Detective Sergeant Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn from “Game of Thrones”) patrol the East End of London in 1889 — a year after serial killer Jack the Ripper vanished.

The police deal with the constant pervasive fear that the Ripper might return, as well as with prostitution, child gangs, theft and murder.

A guide leading a tour of the places where the Ripper slaughtered his victims stumbles across a dead woman whose body is mutilated a la Ripper. Terror once again grips London, aided and abetted by the questionable journalistic practices of the popular press of the period, when fear and curiosity, not facts, sold newspapers.

It comes down to: Was the woman’s killer really the Ripper or someone else?

Read more here:http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/01/15/2436241/csi-victoriana-comes-alive-in.html#storylink=cpy 

'Ripper Street' episode three 'The King Came Calling' review Season 1, episode 3 Published Sunday, Jan 13 2013, 5:00pm EST | By Morgan Jeffery Follow us: @digitalspy on Twitter | digitalspyuk on Facebook

If you've previously found yourself offended by the grisly tone of BBC One's Ripper Street then we hope you've located the remote control by now. If not, episode three's opening sequence - which featured vomit, butchery and a gruesome death - would be more than enough to put you off your Sunday roast.

The sickness and gore continues apace this week, as Whitechapel is hit by a cholera scare, with the ever level-headed Detective Inspector Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) determined to contain the chaos.

A scene early in the episode, in which Captain Jackson (Adam Rothenberg) takes apparent pleasure in watching his apprentice Hobbs (Jonathan Barnwell) squirm at the autopsy he is helping to perform, almost feels like Ripper Street setting out its stall. The message is clear - if you can't handle the bloodshed, get out of the dead room.

/Don't be fooled by the period setting and impressive production design, this show is far from classy fare, but it remains rollicking good fun nevertheless. "Who are you?" a lady of the night asks our heroes at one point. "The police, wench!" Jerome Flynn's Bennet Drake barks back. Yes, Ripper Street is fast becoming The Sweeney 1889.


Read more: http://www.digitalspy.com/british-tv/s213/ripper-street/recaps/a449704/ripper-street-episode-three-the-king-came-calling-review.html#ixzz2HzPEa6S9 
Follow us: @digitalspy on Twitter | digitalspyuk on Facebook

Matthew Macfadyen and GOT’s Jerome Flynn Talk BBC America’s Ripper Street Leave a Comment Posted by gamenews123

BBC America is set to premiere their period procedural crime drama Ripper Street beginning on January 19 (the show is already airing in the U.K.).

Set in Victorian London, the series focuses on Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen), who is haunted by the failure to catch the notorious Jack the Ripper. Reid heads up H Division, the toughest district in London’s East End, as new murder investigations bring the fear that Jack could be back. Ripper Street also stars Jerome Flynn (Game of Thrones), Adam Rothenberg (Alcatraz), Myanna Buring (The Twilight Saga, White Heat) and David Dawson (Luther, Secret Diary of a Call Girl).

Series creator Richard Warlow, Executive producer Will Gould, Macfadyen, Flynn and Rothenberg were all present at today’s TCA (Television Critics Association) tour to talk about the show.


Ripper Street is structured as a procedural crime drama set against London’s East End, shaken in the wake of the still-at-large Jack the Ripper.

"The whole point of the show is that its about what it was like for the police at the time, the confusion and loss," said series creator Richard Warlow.

The show does not plan to create a manufactured "reveal" of who the Ripper is at its conclusion. The intent is to focus on what the failure to capture him did to do the officers who hunted the killer, and to a community that felt the need to raise civilian forces to do the work that, some felt, the officials either would not, or could not accomplish.

The idea isn’t to solve the legend, but rather to, "do a period drama that delved into the bloodier/darker side of our past, rather than just people sitting around drinking tea," Warlow says.

"We will explore the aftermath into the second series, and the Ripper’s presence will always be a part of our characters lives," executive producer Will Gould added.

Though it is period, what interested the creators and the cast is that the characters would actually consider themselves, "quite modern," Macfadyen says.

Adding: "They would have felt incredibly cutting edge."

"I found Reid fascinating because he’s not a stock detective character, he’s a modern and forward looking man rather than a jaded copper," Macfayden says.


READ MORE: https://gamenews123.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/matthew-macfadyen-and-gots-jerome-flynn-talk-bbc-americas-ripper-street/

'Ripper Street' promotional photos and spoilers of 'The King Came Calling' (Photos) RIPPER STREETJANUARY 8, 2013BY: JAMI MCDONALD (EXAMINER)

Spoiler TV released promotional photos of the new BBC eight episode mini series Jan. 8, 2013 and they are extremely entertaining both in period clothing and the action in the photos. You can check out the photos in the slideshow above. You can also check out a 3 minute spoiler scene from this upcoming episode here. In this video preview you see the Reid discussing the Ripper tactics and how convenient the river is to the disposal of bodies. It also reveals the rumors of a possible cholera outbreak that could put a crimp in Reid's investigation to find "The Ripper"

READ MORE: http://www.examiner.com/article/ripper-street-promotional-photos-and-spoilers-of-the-king-came-calling

Ripper Street Review of Episode 2 (DEN OF GEEK)

Review Jamie-Lee Nardone

This week's Ripper Street plays out like a post-watershed Oliver Twist. Here's Jamie-Lee's review...


This review contains spoilers.

1.2 In My Protection

Imagine your worst nightmare: a plague of zombies, an infestation of giant spiders under the bed, or a massive scratch on your limited edition The Dark Knight Rises Blu-ray ... Now try and fathom something far more evil and you will have a vague idea of the level of depravity that the second episode of Ripper Street approaches. That’s right. Last week, it was Victorian snuff movies. This week, it’s Children Who Kill. And how. Think Oliver Twist, if Tarantino had been around offering advice to Dickens during a session in the local ale house, after devouring a year’s worth of penny dreadfuls.

The episode starts with the killing of a toymaker. A fourteen year old boy carrying the dead man’s possessions is brought to the police by a group of vigilantes who seek justice for the streets of London. This group is lead by George Lusk, played by Michael Smiley who, as usual, does not fail to impress. Assuming the role as a voice of the people with lynch mob mentality and the kind with lack of attention to details, he stirs up tension among the public and openly taunts Detective Inspector Reid (Matthew Macfadyen), claiming that he and his force are ineffectual and his mob need to do his job for him. Lusk rallies them to court and seeks the ultimate punishment for the boy, who refuses to neither speak nor deny the charge and is sentenced to death.


Enter Carmichael, played by the phenomenal Joe Gilgun of This is England and Misfits fame to stir things up as Whitechapel’s very own X-rated Fagin. Leading an army of orphan-criminals, he plays the perfect psychopath, demanding respect at all costs. And he’s not merely teaching them to pick a pocket or two. There’s something much darker going on with him.

But Reid is perturbed by the child’s silence, and aided by a concerned lawyer and orphanage governess, decides to get to the bottom of what actually happened and what is currently going on at the hands of Carmichael’s thirst for unyielding subservience, obedience and crime. Oh, and his army of teeny, tiny assassins.

READ MORE: http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/ripper-street/23985/ripper-street-episode-2-review-in-my-protection

Ripper Street Ep 2 Trailer - BBC One

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwtyapGoxlo

REVIEW: Ripper Street (SQUABBLE BOX)

It was only a matter of time before we got another Jack the Ripper spin-off. The sport was to try to guess which genre or genres they were going to try to combine it with this time.

The BBC have obviously racked their brains over this one, and after diligently flicking around a few hundred digital channels, have come up with the franchise’s latest contrived mash-up: Jack the Ripper meets CSI in the Wild West.

With Whitechapel,  ITV have also recently had a stab (no pun intended) at Jack. But unlike ITV’s modern-day setting, the Beeb’s version is set in 1889 and miraculously resists the temptation of casting the usually ever-present Phil Davis. Ripper Street is set six months after Jack the Ripper began his gory exploits, and everyone is more than a little jumpy.

The Deadwood-esque Wild West filming style and heavy-handed, discordant music score make Ripper Street feel like a darker, nastier version of Guy Ritchie’s 2009 remake of Sherlock Holmes, and the programme’s brutal, blood-spitting, flesh-ripping visuals would be just as at home in a Quentin Tarantino movie.

Jerome Flynn used to be in pop duo Robson and Jerome. I will never forgive him for that, but I have to admit he is rather good in Ripper Street. As is Matthew Macfadyen as Detective Inspector Edmund Reid, a smart, progressive copper intent on dragging the Met out of the Dark Ages and into the glossy, soft focus crime labs of CSI: Miami.

This unlikely League of Gentlemen is completed by an American surgeon played by Adam Rothenberg – an ex-employee of the Pinkerton’s Detective Agency, drafted in, no doubt, to more graphically underline the Wild West parallel.

READ MORE: http://www.squabblebox.co.uk/2013/01/review-ripper-street/

Ripper Street draws nearly 90 complaints 3 January, 2013 | By Jake Kanter (BROADCAST)

Nearly 90 viewers have complained about the violent and sexual scenes in BBC1’s new period crime thriller Ripper Street.

The Tiger Aspect drama, set in Jack the Ripper-era London and starring Matthew Macfadyen, has alarmed some viewers, despite the BBC broadcasting a warning about the potentially upsetting scenes at the start of Sunday’s launch episode.

The corporation has received 79 complaints about the programme, while Ofcom has heard from a further 9 disgruntled viewers. The media regulator has yet to decide whether it will follow up the complaints with a formal investigation.

Ripper Street pulled in 6.09m (23.6%) viewers in a 9pm post-watershed slot after being heavily trailed during the Olympics and over the festive period.

READ MORE: http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/broadcasters/ripper-street-draws-nearly-90-complaints/5050299.article?blocktitle=Most-commented&contentID=-1

Matthew Macfadyen-Episode Two Ripper Street

BBC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO1gpRyn28A

Ripper Street: episode two plot and picture preview Find out what's in store for Reid and the team in the next instalment of BBC1's new crime drama (RADIO TIMES)

David Brown
9:37 PM, 30 December 2012

The new Victorian-set crime drama continues next Sunday with a case centring around Ernest Manby (David Coon), a 60-year-old toy maker beaten to death for the coins in his pocket and a mysterious brass box.

The Whitechapel Vigilance Committee offers up 14-year-old Thomas Gower (Giacomo Mancini) as a culprit, with the youth refusing to deny the charge. Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) – his conscience pricked by a radical lawyer called Eagles (Hugh O'Conor) and orphanage governess Deborah Goren (Lucy Cohu) – tests the validity of the investigation.

READ MORE:http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-12-30/ripper-street-episode-two-plot-and-picture-preview

TV review: Ripper Street; Neil Armstrong – First Man on the Moon; The Hotel It throws in everything from CSI to Sherlock, but Ripper Street is proper crime drama (GUARDIAN)

Sam Wollaston
The Guardian, Sunday 30 December 2012 17.00 EST

Methodical ... Matthew Macfadyen as DI Edmund Reid in Ripper Street. Photograph: Amanda Searle/BBC/Tiger Aspect

Cor blimey. East London, 1889, ain't no place for no shrinking violet. Well, not according to Ripper Street (BBC1, Sunday). The men are all at the fight (bare–knuckle, naturally) and the women are all on the game, even though it's only a few months since the horribly mutilated body of Jack the Ripper's last victim was found. Suspicion, rumour and terror run in the gutters, along with all the usual Victorian filth.

Then there's blood in the gutters, too. Another body, another young woman, with the Ripper's calling card slices. Is it him – is Jack back?

Sensible, handsome Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) isn't so sure. He's not jumping to any conclusions, nor ruling anything out, just going about the investigation in the methodical, pragmatic way he would any other, pinning photos and stuff up on the blackboard (that's what the police used is it, before they got those transparent screens modern TV detectives have?). Reid calls on a seedy American pal, a former Pinkerton detective who has the combined talents of Grissom and Holmes, for a bit of help with the forensics and the logical reasoning.

It would be easy to be negative about Ripper Street. Do we really need more on a story that's been not just done to death, but then carved up, and had its insides torn out? Why this obsession? You could also be cynical about it more specifically as television. It's manufactured, a hybrid, televisual eugenics: take beautiful period drama, then sex up, literally, with sex; and darken, with nasty dark sex; add CSI, Waking the Dead, Sherlock, a touch of Life on Mars, Garrow's Law … anything that's been done well recently. Perhaps in the next episode there will be a phone vote to decide who goes to the gallows.


But, on the first point, this isn't really about Jack the Ripper – not so far, anyway. It's about the aftermath, it's about a time and a place and a feeling, it's about the police, and the press, and the people, and it's actually about that obsession. And on the other: well, maybe it is a cocktail – but it's a bloody good cocktail. Warlow's/Leveson's script is real, alive and human. It's beautifully performed, and beautiful to look at – stylish, and stylised. The bare-knuckle fight scenes are brutal and memorable. It's proper, character-based crime drama, gripping, and yes – I'm afraid – ripping as well.

READ MORE:http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/dec/30/ripper-street-tv-review