Should I Check This Out - Ripper Street

Rather than dispersing season one and the start of season two into two separate articles, this time I thought it would best to write about the BBC show Ripper Street as it stands today.

Set just after the events of Jack the Ripper, the series follows Whitechapel's H Division police as they tackle crime in Victorian East End. The show focuses on three lead members of H Division played by Matthew Macfadyen, Game of Thrones' Jerome Flynn and Adam Rothenberg. All of whom form a charismatic trio who manage to keep the show going, even when it's not at its strongest.

Unlike other films and shows, I find Ripper Street to be a tough one to criticise, but also a tough one to praise as it is somewhat unbalanced. I think what initially hurt the series was what everyone expected from a show like this after having seen Victorian London brought to life in the Sherlock Holmes films by Guy Ritchie and then the modern adaption with Sherlock. Instead the show tries to take a far more gritty approach but lacks a certain oomph that Ritchie (I may be alone in saying this) was able to deliver when bringing 1880/90s London to life, which might be due to a shaky script that doesn't know when to hold back on older expressions in favour of modern ones and vice versa.

That said, while season one wasn't always perfect, it did occasionally manage to deliver quite a few memorable episodes. One in particular is episode five that features fellow Game of Thrones star Iain Glen as a bitter British Colonel from the Mahdist War, who steals the show with a great performance, managing to highlight what is sometimes missing.

As season one adopts the crime-of-the-week approach, many villains/ criminals are often unmemorable but when they work, they bring life to the show and season two seems to have that covered in the form of another Game of Thrones star, Joseph Mawle, who is also brilliant as a bent cop, acting against Macfadyen's Edmund Reid.

And while season two wasn't quite the perfect return for the show with a rather dull plot about harmful drugs being produced in London that's been done before, the characters manage to keep the show alive, and so long as it continues to develop them, I would recommend Ripper Street as an entertaining show worth checking out if you have the time.

While I have said it before - and I am starting to look like more and more of an optimist - hopefully the stories will improve as the show does deliver great visuals, attention to period detail and solid performances that keep things going. With some work patching up the script, the BBC are certainly onto a very entertaining show, even if it doesn't quite always hit the mark.