BBC One’s Ripper Street is a new crime drama in the East End of London as it moves into the last decade of the 19th century.
> Order Ripper Street on DVD on Amazon.
April 1889 – six months since the last Jack the Ripper killing. East London is emerging into a fragile peace, hopeful that this killer’s reign of terror might at last have run its course. Nowhere is this truer than in the corridors of H Division, the police precinct charged with keeping order in the chaos of Whitechapel. Its men hunted this maniac – and failed to find him.
Ripper Street is their story. A police procedural set in the teeming streets of the East End as it moves into the last decade of the 19th century. H Division was responsible for policing a relatively small area of just 1¼ square miles, yet into that space were packed some 67,000 people: a seething, bustling mass of the poor and dispossessed.
Between the factories, rookeries, chop shops and pubs that mark out this maelstrom moves Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) – a forward thinking detective haunted by a tragic past mistake. Accompanied by the ever loyal local brawn of Detective Sergeant Bennett Drake (Jerome Flynn) and the mercurial brilliance of the US Army surgeon and one-time Pinkerton detective, Captain Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg), Reid seeks to bring justice to a world that is forever on the brink of mayhem.
Ripper Street is a fictionalised trek into the heart of a London borough living in the blood soaked aftermath of that forever anonymous killer. It is an investigative procedural about dedicated policemen for whom life – and crime – go on.
Episode 1
Sunday 30 December 2012, 9pm
A young woman is found brutally murdered, the hallmark signs of the Ripper upon her.
One time H Division boss, Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline, believes it Jack’s return, but Reid – the precinct’s new master – suspects a different evil at work.
Episode 2
Sunday 6 January 2013, 9pm
Ernest Manby, a 60-year-old toy maker, is beaten to death for a mysterious brass box and the coins in his pocket. The Whitechapel Vigilance Committee presents a culprit in the form of 14-year-old Thomas Gower, who refuses to deny the charge. Reid – his conscience challenged by a radical lawyer called Eagles and orphanage Governess Deborah Goren – tests the security of the case.
Meanwhile, Jackson’s drinking and gambling have led to the loss of the pendant that ties him to his American past – a past that he and Long Susan fear will now be exposed. Reid and Drake find themselves besieged at Miss Goren’s orphanage by the rest of Gower’s vicious child gang and their brutal master, Carmichael.
Episode 3
Sunday 13 January 2013, 9pm
H Division and the independent City of London force are thrown together when the panic surrounding a sudden cholera outbreak leads them to conclude wilful contamination is afoot in both boroughs.
Inspector Sydney Ressler (Patrick Baladi) joins Reid’s team as they scour Whitechapel for clues and connections. Meanwhile, Emily Reid (Amanda Hale) seeks patronage for her charity efforts, unaware of the resistance she will meet. As Jackson’s lab fills with bodies, and with no clear correlation between the victims to be found, the team work against the clock to find some underlying pattern amidst the rising tide of sickness and death.
Episode 4
Sunday 20 January 2013, 9pm
The brutal clearing of a local slum for the underground railway reveals an almost indecipherable murder scene and an unreliable slum girl witness.
Lucy Eames (Emma Rigby), beautiful and disturbed, is the unlikely key to a byzantine web of conspiracy that appears to entangle progressive London councillor Stanley Bone (Paul McGann), Long Susan and the benevolent Dr Karl Crabbe (Anton Lesser) of the Lark Rise asylum. As Reid closes in on the killer, it becomes clear that the condemned slum is home to dark secrets that someone is desperate to protect.
Episode 5
Sunday 27 January 2013, 9pm
A string of brilliantly masterminded robberies draws the attention of Reid and his team, and steal Drake away from his attempted courtship of Rose.
While Jackson works to trace the thieves’ hardware, Drake is confronted with a spectre from his past in the form of his one time Colonel Madoc Faulkner (Iain Glen), returned to London to seek redress for the unjust treatment of the Empire’s soldiers. As Reid closes in on the brash robbers and their ultimate target, Drake finds his loyalties put to the ultimate test.
Episode 6
Sunday 3 February 2013, 9pm
As the dock strike of August ’89 takes grip of the city, the killing of a Jewish anarchist leads Reid and the team into the merciless chicanery of the British government’s fight against international terrorism.
The order from Reid’s superiors is to drop the case, but he can smell something afoot, particularly when Deborah Goren appears at the station vouching for the dead man’s character. Jackson is sent undercover at the escalating Dock Strikes, while Drake is on the other side, policing against what he considers justified protest. As Reid digs deeper, he discovers signs of Special Branch and Russian agitators pulling strings on his own manor – while the approaching anniversary of a great tragedy in his life tips his personal life into crisis.
Episode 7
Sunday 17 February 2013, 9pm
International shipping magnate TP Swift arrives in town with his Pinkerton retinue in tow to complete the acquisition of an ailing London shipping line.
Meanwhile, the murdered body of an engine inventor draws Reid’s attention just as Jackson and Susan find their past come back to haunt them and their future in Whitechapel – their very lives – brought into question. As Swift’s Pinkertons cut a violent trail through the borough set on a very personal vengeance, Reid is confronted with a terrible tragedy among his own team.
Episode 8
Sunday 24 February 2013, 9pm
Jackson is in custody, facing the noose for a murder he never committed. Drake is despondent, his personal life a shambles. And Reid is adrift – his team in pieces, Leman Street in mourning, and his heart torn between two women.
The suspected kidnapping of Rose, however, offers cause for Reid to try and assemble his men and crack the white slavery ring they find operating in their midst. But as the clues accumulate, Reid is gripped by a growing obsession that the man he hunts may have personal knowledge of the terrible secret Reid nurtures regarding his own past.
> Order Ripper Street on DVD on Amazon.
Are you looking forward to Ripper Street? Let us know below…