Product Description
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Ripper Street (BBC/DVD)
BBC America’s compelling crime drama Ripper Street set in the
seething backstreets of Victorian London comes to DVD! Haunted by
the failure to catch London’s most evil killer, Jack the Ripper,
Inspector Edmund Reid now heads up the notorious H Division – the
toughest district in the East End. Charged with keeping
order in the blood-stained streets of Whitechapel, Reid and his
men find themselves fighting to uphold justice and the rule of
law; but always in the background lurks the fear of the Ripper –
is he back for another reign of terror? Rich episodic storylines
meld with the intrigue of a criminal underworld festering on the
hard streets of Victorian London, following the battle of the men
whose job it is to bring the law to the lawless.
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Is Jack the Ripper still on the loose in the streets of
Whitechapel? That's the premise behind the sensational BBC drama
Ripper Street, a procedural and forensic investigation
serial that's more than a century ahead of its time--if TV and
gritty, realistic cop shows had existed in 1889, that is. Matthew
Macfadyen is Detective Inspector Edmund Reid, a forward-thinking
lawman in charge of H Division in squalid East London, where it
has been six months since his department investigated the last
murder committed by the notorious serial killer. But since Reid
does not know that the last murder was the Ripper's final strike,
the city has no reason to believe that he is not still at large.
So when a gruesome crime is discovered that bears some of the
hallmarks of Jack's M.O., panic grips Whitechapel again, and it
is Inspector Reid's job to rule out the Ripper even as he's
forced to relive the trauma of his unsolved investigation. This
eight-part series was broadcast on BBC America in 2012 to much
accl for its attention to period detail at the end of the
Victorian era as well as for its unflinching exploration of the
seedy underbelly of London's most sordid slum. Ripper Street has
been described as a 19th-century Law & Order, CSI, or Criminal
Minds, and it does share the same adherence to the procedural
methods of great cop shows. But it is much richer for its use of
colorfully idiomatic language, wit, intelligence, and a
sensibility that's closer to HBO or a feature film than it is to
network TV. Each episode focuses on the thorough investigation of
a horrific murder (or murders). There is also an arc that follows
an unfolding interconnectedness between characters, as well as
the larger issue of whether the Ripper is gone and who he might
have been. Assisting Reid in his work is his loyal,
tough-as-nails aide Detective Sergeant Bennet Drake (Jerome
Flynn), and a shady American surgeon and ex-Pinkerton agent
Captain Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg). Jackson turns out not to
be all he says he is; the same goes for his close associate Long
Susan (MyAnna Buring), a mysterious brothel owner who figures
prominently in the show's larger thematic development. Reid and
Jackson share an uneasy friendship and professional respect built
primarily on the inspector's cleverness in work and the
doctor's keen mind for forensic examination.
The show's chapters all turn on some sort of technological
advance or striking cultural change to propel a mystery and its
solution. The premiere episode, "I Need Light," is structured
around a new kind of camera that captures pictures sequentially
to present an alternate version of real life. Reid is awed by the
device, even as its appearance is the cause of great personal
torment for him (the Ripper's potential return) and results in
monstrous leaps of human cruelty. The episode also sets the stage
for the show's general predilection for lurid motivations, in
this case suggesting that the first motion pictures were
pornographic snuff films. Other episodes deal with human
trafficking, industrial espionage, and the use of biological
weapons, and all are infused with highfalutin dialogue that makes
their crafty narratives hum with intrigue. Also woven into the
background fabric are encroaching sea changes such as the
telegraph, the stock ticker, electric lights, and mass transit.
The most important nuances, however, are in the way the
hard-edged characters spin out their unfolding inner dramas.
There may be modern techniques of criminal investigation and the
encroachment of radical technologies enlightening Ripper Street's
worldview, but it's solid storytelling that gives such a fresh
look to the old-fashioned dirty deeds. --Ted Fry
