“Whitechapel calls you back"
Victorian crime procedural Ripper Street burst onto our screens at the
beginning of this year with a blood-spattered élan and a perhaps more violent
streak than many were expecting, but it grew to be a most successful series
with audiences (and me) and has since been renewed for a second series. Set in
Whitechapel, the first episode had a Jack the Ripper focus, which with the
title of the show, proved a bit of misdirection in terms of the series as a
whole as the crimes that H Division ended up investigating were of a hugely
wide-ranging nature and not just focused on the notorious serial killer
(although the Ripper’s exploits did form a backdrop to part of the series-long
arc).
It’s a period of history, and particularly social history, that I have long
found interesting (I studied it as part of my degree) as notions of crime and punishment
were rapidly changing and the nature of policing was also changing with the
introduction of a more scientific approach to solving crimes. So Matthew
Macfadyen’s DI Reid and Jerome Flynn’s DS Flynn are joined by US army surgeon
Captain Jackson, played by Adam Rothenburg, as they work their way through the serious
crimes, civil unrest, and personal vendettas that crop up on a weekly basis.
I enjoyed the series immensely, finding it well-written – balancing something of a romp with the much darker undertones that frequently rear their ugly head – and impeccably performed. The three leads were all strong but a mark of the show’s quality – written and directed by Richard Warlow – is the calibre of the supporting cast that it managed to attract to each episode. With the likes of Iain Glen, Amanda Drew, Paul McGann, Penny Downie and Beverley Klein popping up as criminal masterminds, corrupt councillors and grieving widows, each episode was a thesp-filled treat – something made even better by the presence of such especial favourites David Dawson, Amanda Hale and of course Lucy Cohu – the reason for this review – as recurring characters.
Dawson’s conniving journalist is good, Hale’s grief-stricken wife of DI Reid is
also strong although perhaps a little too close to the typecasting that
characterises her TV roles, and Cohu brings her customary emotional depth to
the orphanage governess Deborah Goren, laden with a tragic past and inexorably
drawn to the unhappily married Reid and she shares wonderful chemistry with
Macfadyen so I really hope she returns with the show. If nothing else, her
presence gives lie to the early protests that the show was misogynistic as its
only portrayals of women were as whores or mothers and that they got the
majority of the violence but across the series this just wasn’t the case and a
show set at that time has to reflect the reality – to put a woman in the police
force would just be wrong. But barely-there controversies aside, I reckon it is
well worth renting the DVDs or buying the boxset.
Labels: Amanda Drew, Amanda Hale, Beverley Klein, David Dawson, David Oakes, Emma Rigby, Iain Glen, Julian Bleach, Lucy Cohu, Mark Dexter, Matthew MacFadyen, Penny Downie, Sam Hazeldine