Jack The Ripper may be fading into memory now, but East London has found no peace; H Division’s beat is more chaotic and lawless than ever.
Series 1 regulars Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg and Myanna Buring are all back for Series 2, alongside Joseph Mawle (Game of Thrones) who joins the cast as corrupt Inspector Jebediah Shine.
> Buy Series 1 on DVD on Amazon.
> Order Series 2 on DVD on Amazon.
Episode 1: ‘Pure as the Driven’
Monday 28 October 2013, 9pm
When a sergeant from Limehouse’s neighbouring K Division is found, hurled from a Whitechapel tenement window on to the iron railings below, Reid is quick to act. If the police are to be so publicly assaulted on his streets, what hope for law-abiding civilian life?
Investigations into the man’s activities lead them to the newly emergent Chinatown of the Limehouse dockside; and from there into the orbit of K-Division’s Inspector Jedediah Shine.
Shine’s conviction is that his sergeant has fallen victim to a Triad turf-war in this new market, but Jackson discovers evidence of a newly synthesised and devastatingly powerful opiate that leads Reid to different conclusions. And a dread fear that a new kind of hell is to be released on to his streets.
Episode 2: ‘Am I Not Monstrous?’
Monday 4 November 2013, 9pm
Only hours after she gave birth in its maternity ward, a nameless and seemingly vagrant young woman is found murdered in a stairwell at Whitechapel’s The London Hospital.
The only suggestion of her identity, however, is the strange protrusion at the base of her spine – a vestigial tail. It is a clue which is to take Reid and the team into the shadowy netherworld of the circus freakshows and thence back to The London Hospital to seek help and understanding from its most celebrated resident, Joseph Merrick, aka The Elephant Man.
Merrick certainly has insight to offer but his growing trust and faith in Reid leads him to reveal even more devastating information – information that leads Reid back into the menacing world of his Limehouse colleague Jedediah Shine.
Elsewhere – Chief Inspector Abberline arrives with reinforcements for H-Division in the form of Detective Constable Albert Flight, a young Irishman of great ambition. The death of PC Hobbs still an all too sharp grief for him, Reid fears for the callow youth’s fate on these meanest of streets.
Episode 3: ‘Become Man’
Monday 11 November 2013, 9pm
A prominent member of the newly formed London County Council is skillfully abducted from his table at Whitechapel’s Blewett’s Theatre of Varieties, the music hall where Rose Erskine now works as a waitress.
Their investigation brings the recently married Drake back into contact with Rose, the girl who broke his heart. And it also introduces Reid to Councilor Jane Cobden, the first woman ever appointed to the LCC – because it appears the kidnappers are a female gang, and radical supporters of Cobden’s aims.
When a lawyer is similarly abducted from his pleasures in one of the Leman Street bedrooms, Long Susan finds herself faced with the gang’s charismatic leader and soon taken by force herself to the gang’s hideout.
As Jackson works furiously to discover their whereabouts, so Susan finds herself growing sympathetic to her captors’ lives and aims – an affection which leads her, for the first time, to question the worth of the working life she has established in Whitechapel.
Episode 4: ‘Dynamite and a Woman’
Monday 18 November 2013, 9pm
After over 20 years in Newgate Gaol, the Irish dynamiter, Aiden Galvin, is sprung from his prison wagon’s journey through Whitechapel.
Barely a day later he has exploded a device beneath the bed of the prominent MP Cecil Knightly, a vociferous opponent of The Home Rule movement. Despite their outward protestations of peace, Chief Inspector Abberline is convinced that the Irish Republican Brotherhood is once more about its work and orders Reid to send the Irish DC Flight undercover into Whitechapel’s Irish community.
As Flight draws closer to the beautiful young woman, Evelyn, who is believed to be Galvin’s daughter, so Jackson’s forensic investigation into the explosive device itself leads Reid to examine its victim, Knightly, in more detail.
A man of power and influence, he had positioned himself at the heart of London’s emerging energy lobby. A new power station is to be constructed within Councilor Jane Cobden’s constituency and Reid begins to wonder if, in fact, the MP’s murder has more to do with greed and corruption than it does with Irish nationalism.
Episode 5: ‘Threads of Silk and Gold’
Monday 25 November 2013, 9pm
Investigations into the brutal slaying of a Telegraph Boy lift the lid on a vice racket run from the offices of the GPO. The telegraph ledger leads Reid to the heart of the one of the city’s most august financial institutions, Barings Bank.
It is a trail that will reveal blackmail, looming economic disaster, financial corruption – the great passions shaped in men by both love and gold, and passions that are starkly shaped in Captain Jackson’s life as he seeks ever more perilous means of ridding himself and Long Susan of the suffocating debt they owe the moneylender, Silas Duggan.
Episode 6: ‘A Stronger Loving World’
Monday 2 December 2013, 9pm
Churches and synagogues are being burnt and desecrated in Whitechapel and Reid suspects the same hand is behind the various attacks – someone who would exploit the fragile peace that exists between East London’s diverse communities and see the streets escalate into sectarian mayhem.
Seeking once more the help of the Jewish mathematician, Isaac Bloom, Reid’s inquiries take him beyond orthodox religious beliefs, however – into the occult, millennial beliefs of those who see the world moving into a great and transforming cataclysm.
Meanwhile, the all-too-brief domestic happiness that Sergeant Drake has enjoyed is to be disrupted by the arrival of a friend from his wife Bella’s past, the mysterious and charismatic scholar Gabriel Cain.
Episode 7 ‘Our Betrayal – Part 1’
Monday 9 December 2013, 9pm
The pall of personal tragedy looms over the men of H Division as, from far shores, a very real and very valuable symbol of the British Empire’s wealth arrives in the form of an uncut diamond.
It is a stone ‘freed’ from the diamond monopoly of De Graal by one Daniel Judge, Captain Jackson’s reckess and untrustworthy elder brother.
As Jackson absorbs both the potential wealth of this gem and the deep personal irritation of his sibling, Reid and Flight are drawn to the plight of a local craftsman defrauded of his work and income by a sophisticated long-firm scam – a deception that is to return H Division to the malign influence of Detective Inspector Jedediah Shine.
Meanwhile, Long Susan finds herself powerless to resist the ever-encroaching influence that Silas Duggan is determined to exert on her life.
Episode 8: ‘Our Betrayal – Part 2’
Monday 16 December 2013, 9pm
Death and violence stalk Whitechapel once more. Decayed and murdered corpses are found in a slum tenement, and the advanced stages of the police divisional boxing championship – the Lafone Cup – reveal the vengeful ferocity to be found within the ranks of the force itself.
As Reid and Drake find themselves powerless to resist the awful temptation of a final reckoning with K Division’s Jedediah Shine, so Jackson and Judge’s ever more desperate attempts to profit from that stolen diamond lead them into the teeth of the murderous agents of the De Graal monopoly. And Long Susan must decide where her future lies – with Jackson, or allied to the venal but powerful Duggan.
> Buy Series 1 on DVD on Amazon.
> Order Series 2 on DVD on Amazon.
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