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.

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Victorian sex & violence is gRIPPING - Says Matthew MacFadyen (THE SUN)

EXCLUSIVE By LAURA ARMSTRONG

MATTHEW MacFADYEN has defended Ripper Street against claims it is too graphic – insisting that most Brits RELISH Victorian sex and violence.

Nearly 90 viewers have complained since the BBC1 crime series, set in east London in the Jack The Ripper era, started two weeks ago.

But former Spooks actor Matthew, who plays detective inspector Edmund Reid, reckons the gritty reality shown on screen is an essential part of the show’s appeal.

He told TV Biz: “I think people are fascinated by Victorian attitudes towards sex and society. And back then in the East End there was enormous poverty.

“Actually, it was the Ripper murders that brought to light the dire poverty in the East End. They showed them up to a greater audience.”

He added: “Ripper Street is a very original thing really. The script grabs you because it is bombastic, big and colourful and grimy as well. There’s lots of stuff in there.

“And being able to go back to seedy Whitechapel is brilliant.

“The show designer is a supremely talented man and his team have been fantastic.

“All of the sets are as it was back then. There’s a toymaker’s shop, a pub, an orphanage and an asylum and all kinds of different things, so it’s great.”

He said: “My character, Reid, is a very dedicated and forward-thinking policeman. What I find interesting is that there’s nothing jaded about him.

“I wanted to get away from the classic ‘seen it all, done it all’ copper and he’s definitely not that.

“He’s progressive and interested in the innovations of the age.

“But he has also got quite a lot of anger and a fairly dark past.

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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