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 and Game of Thrones' Jerome Flynn Talk Ripper Street It’s a bloody good time on Ripper Street. by Roth Cornet JA (IGN)

http://ripperstreet.tumblr.com/

“A lot comes out about his past,” Flynn says of Drake. “He's this wounded boy from the lower class who had a broken childhood, and he's got a lot of demons he picked up from then and from fighting in Egypt in the war. So he's in battle with those parts of himself, and yet there's a real heart to the man, which gets melted by women.”

Flynn’s character has a particular affection for Reid that is tested both by Reid’s attachment to the American Jackson (whom Drake has a great disdain for) and the ghosts of his past rearing their less-than-savory heads.

“He had a Colonel from the army who he served and was extremely loyal to who comes back and tries to get him to cross over to the other side of the law,” Flynn says. “Inspector Reid has become a new father figure, so Drake has got really split loyalties. A lot of the soldiers, as they are now, come back having fought for their Kingdom and risking their lives and are not being looked after, and many end up on the street. A lot of the homeless, as today, come from the army, so that falls on him. He has to face these things that have been festering in him, and what he saw and what he went through in Egypt. As well as the fact that he's fallen in love with this prostitute and he's putting all of his eggs in that basket and setting himself up for a big fall. She kind of plays him along and uses him a bit. It's sad.”

All of the characters will be dealing with unfolding tales of woe, it seems.

“Reid has a painful journey,” Macfadyen says. “He has a lot of anger and sadness that he's bottled up to do with his family, and that's sort of revealed.” Reid has made a “huge error” with his daughter, who has gone missing, and must play that out over the series. There are hints that her disappearance may have something to do with the Ripper, but Macfadyen promises that the series will never offer a trite and manufactured “Ripper reveal.” Jack was never caught, and the premise of the show is to explore how his specter haunts the police and the East End community.

“Also, Jackson's background is fascinatingly dense; there are things that he's hiding from Reid,” The actor says. “Reid really likes him and wants him on his side. He doesn't really care that he's a whoring, untrustworthy American. He just thinks him brilliant. Drake and Jackson, on the other hand, hate each other from the get go. It becomes extremely problematic as the series goes on.”

READ MORE: http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/01/26/matthew-macfadyen-and-game-of-thrones-jerome-flynn-talk-ripper-street?abthid=51033677da590bf35100001b

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/

'I Tried Generally Not F***ing Up': Matthew Macfadyen Talks About Ripper Street (E.)

With the success of British period drama Downton Abbey, the US audience are set for another treat from our fair isles in the form of Ripper Street.

With his role in the show an important part, actor Matthew Macfadyen has spoken to The Hollywood Reporter about his role, admitting that he "tried generally not f***ing up", on the show which is set in Victorian London.

Speaking of his role playing Inspector Edmund Reid, the actor revealed that Reid is "very free-thinking and forward-thinking.

"He was a very moral man. At the time, it was a different kind of morality."

READ MORE;  http://www.entertainmentwise.com/news/102070/I-Tried-Generally-Not-Fing-Up-Matthew-Macfadyen-Talks-About-Ripper-Street

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 episode 4 review: The Good Of This City Review Jamie-Lee Nardone (DEN OF GEEK)

The Eighth Doctor, aka Paul McGann, tips up on Ripper Street this week. Here's Jamie-Lee's review...

This review contains spoilers.

1.4 The Good Of This City

Our bloody and brutal Ripper Street has made its way across the pond to BBC America, where it's been the subject of much hype and media attention. Matthew Macfadyen, who plays the lead role of Detective Inspector Reid, has been cited in the papers defending the gore and smut, while Jerome Flynn who plays his right-hand man, Detective Sergeant Drake, has come out with some prime material guaranteed to give the readers of middle-England a touch of the vapours: what was he up to for those lost eight years of his career between Badger and Tommy Cooper and before Game of Thrones and Ripper Street? Well, he was in a sort of religious cult, run by the son of the actor who plays Ken Barlow in Coronation Street. Obviously.

And yes, there's also been the predictable backlash to the BBC's new series. Is it too violent to be shown at 9pm? Is the gore unnecessary? Is it sexist? Quite frankly I bite my thumb at these articles. Ripper Street is offering something new and exciting to our Sunday night rituals of cosy period drama TV viewings. Is it disrupting it? Oh yes.  Happily so. And each episode so far has been unique, pushing boundaries with very different storylines and enticing us with enriched understanding of the interesting lead characters and dazzling us with shiny cameos.

The Good of This City is no different. This week’s episode focuses on various scientific and social developments that were extremely experimental at the time; psychiatry and electricity on the underground. Of course, these are merely backdrops for some gothic and grisly murders and a young girl named Lucy perturbed by her ‘darkness’.

Episode four opens with Long Susan (MyAnna Buring) welcoming a new ‘tart’ to her remarkably salubrious whorehouse, making it sound as though she’s about to enter the Shangri-La. We’ve seen a tough side to Susan’s character through her brief appearances, but are waiting to scratch beneath the surface. Then in walks Lucy, once renowned for being the prettiest prostitute in Tenter Street, who goes to the pint-sized Madame seeking a job. For reasons unknown, she is refused and proclaims that she knows not what will become of her. It’s a fairly bleak and hypocritical moment, with Susan reminding them both (and the audience) that men have created a world in which women are designed for their pleasure from which they can profit. All the while, Susan is there running a brothel at a sixty percent cut. However, in this episode we see how far she really will go to protect her girls.


READ MORE: http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/ripper-street/24163/ripper-street-episode-4-review-the-good-of-this-city

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' Stars Macfadyen, 1880s London by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS January 18, 2013 5:42 PM (NPR)

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Matthew Macfadyen is perfectly presentable in jeans and a crewneck sweater that coordinates nicely with the blue of his eyes.

But the look is far from the elegant attire he wore as Mr. Darcy opposite Keira Knightley's Elizabeth in the 2005 film "Pride & Prejudice." And his posture is just as casual, which he acknowledges might offend the aristocratic character's diehard fans.

"You're slouching! What are you doing? Stand up straight, man!" Macfadyen says, teasing himself.

He looks back fondly on what he calls the "iconic" role drawn from Jane Austen's novel. But the British actor who's also known to audiences for his part as an intelligence officer in the series "MI-5" ("Spooks" in the U.K.) welcomes the chance to switch gears.

"I, as most actors, want to mix it up and do different things. Otherwise it gets boring and tiresome, not only for yourself but for everyone else seeing you do the same kind of thing," he said. "The joy of being an actor is to play different parts, do something different."

Macfadyen's latest chance for diversity comes in "Ripper Street," an 1880s police drama set on the gritty and untamed streets of London's East End around the period that serial killer Jack the Ripper terrorized the area.

The series, starring Macfadyen as Detective Inspector Edmund Reid, debuts Saturday (9 p.m. EST) on BBC America after starting its British run this month. BBC America is home to another rough-and-tumble, 18th-century police drama, "Copper," set in 1860s New York City and the channel's first original scripted series.

The mysterious and brutal Jack the Ripper has been recycled throughout pop culture in films including 1979's "Time After Time" and 2001's "From Hell" with Johnny Depp. But series creator Richard Warlow said the killer is a backdrop and invisible character for "Ripper Street."

"What we wanted to do really was to tell stories about the streets down which he walked and committed his crimes in the wake of those terrible murders," Warlow said, "and how it affected the community and, most importantly, the police that tried and failed to catch him."

Each episode will include what he called a "stand-alone crime" as well as pull at the thread of Reid's life, including those surrounding him at work and at home.


READ MORE: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=169740291

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' 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

Matthew Macfadyen and GOT's Jerome Flynn Talk BBC America's Ripper Street A period show with a contemporary feel. by Roth Cornet JANUARY 5, 2013 (IGN)

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: http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/01/05/matthew-macfadyen-and-gots-jerome-flynn-talk-bbc-americas-ripper-street

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

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

It’s a Ripper! You can almost smell the fear on the set of frighteningly fantastic new crime drama Ripper Street (TV MAGAZINE)

By ANNE-MARIE HAMILTON Published: 27th December 2012

DENSE fog swirls above the cobbles as chickens in wooden cages let out high-pitched squawks and a pair of bloomers swings from a washing line high above the street.

Welcome to the mean streets of Whitechapel in 1889 where corpses, violence and general squalor abound.
It’s a lawless place ruled by fear and the setting for a new crime drama focusing on the terrifying aftermath of the Jack the Ripper murders.

TV Magazine is on location at a former army barracks in Dublin that’s doubling for London’s East End.
And as we peer past a crowd of extras, a familiar figure emerges in the gloom – former Spooks star Matthew Macfadyen, all broad-shouldered and reassuring in a well-cut check suit.

“Everyone has got this terrible hangover from not finding the Ripper – and they’ve got real hangovers as well,” says Matthew, 38, who stars as Detective Edmund Reid. “There has been a little bit of Guinness...”
Within minutes on set, it’s clear that pints of the black stuff have created a tight bond between the show’s three male stars, Matthew, Jerome Flynn and Adam Rothenberg.


“There is a lot of giggling,” admits Jerome, 49. “I have to admit, one of the reasons I wanted to be in the series was because Matt was doing it. I’m a big fan of his and thought: ‘Well, he’s not going to involve himself in anything that’s going to die.’ I think made the right decision.”

“It’s nice being away from London,” muses Matt (here’s hoping his actress wife Keeley Hawes, 36, isn’t offended). “Dublin feels very contained. And the set feels like a playground.”


Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/tvmagazine/tvmagazinefeatures/4714805/Its-a-Ripper-Matthew-Macfadyen-Jerome-Flynn-and-Adam-Rothenberg-star-in-Jack-the-Ripper-drama-Ripper-Street.html#ixzz2GOcA0RZU