Ripper Street?
March 29, 2015 6:31 PM - Subscribe
Period costume police procedural exploring the beginnings of modern forensics and detectoring .. detectiving .. (ugh, whatever) set in Whitechapel England 1889, months after the last Jack the Ripper killing.
I burned through the first season and had been savouring the second. Starting the third soon.
I'm surprised that there hasn't been a ton of interest in this;
"Monster of the Week" format with episode-spanning story arcs. There's a big-bad that's terrific. The Jack the Ripper is just the lede, it's not something that the story focuses on. Some later episodes are more arc-oriented than MotW.
Matthew Macfadyen has had some previous success; TV Pillars of the Earth and MI-5 (haven't seen) and some movie work.
Jerome Flynn, Bron from Game of Thrones, plays a similar kind of character but is given some great material to chew on.
The acting is generally solid and the production quality is aces, if generally restricted to the blue/orange palette cliche. Tone of the show is anachronistically progressive/liberal; at least a couple of eps deal explicitly with homosexuality and there are complex gay characters. Prostitution is a central element in the series and there are well developed characters who are prostitutes or in the business. I thought that this handles Celestials as well as Deadwood, but much less realistically. It's not a super-realistic show (the forensic science, some of it is good, some of it is entertaining, some of it is pure shorthand bs) but it hit all my buttons.
I watched about half of it in multitasking mode; there's a ton of stuff that I've missed. Anyone else interesting in watching through it?
Is it even available for watching?
I burned through the first season and had been savouring the second. Starting the third soon.
I'm surprised that there hasn't been a ton of interest in this;
"Monster of the Week" format with episode-spanning story arcs. There's a big-bad that's terrific. The Jack the Ripper is just the lede, it's not something that the story focuses on. Some later episodes are more arc-oriented than MotW.
Matthew Macfadyen has had some previous success; TV Pillars of the Earth and MI-5 (haven't seen) and some movie work.
Jerome Flynn, Bron from Game of Thrones, plays a similar kind of character but is given some great material to chew on.
The acting is generally solid and the production quality is aces, if generally restricted to the blue/orange palette cliche. Tone of the show is anachronistically progressive/liberal; at least a couple of eps deal explicitly with homosexuality and there are complex gay characters. Prostitution is a central element in the series and there are well developed characters who are prostitutes or in the business. I thought that this handles Celestials as well as Deadwood, but much less realistically. It's not a super-realistic show (the forensic science, some of it is good, some of it is entertaining, some of it is pure shorthand bs) but it hit all my buttons.
I watched about half of it in multitasking mode; there's a ton of stuff that I've missed. Anyone else interesting in watching through it?
Is it even available for watching?
I'm curious about this show now, and the first two seasons are available on Netflix streaming.
posted by vers at 12:41 PM on March 30, 2015
posted by vers at 12:41 PM on March 30, 2015
The first couple of seasons were great. Season 3 . . . not so much.
For extra hilarity, here's Flynn and Robson Green (Wire in the Blood) when they used to be singers.
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 12:53 PM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
For extra hilarity, here's Flynn and Robson Green (Wire in the Blood) when they used to be singers.
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 12:53 PM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
I had no idea that Flynn used to sing. Watching GoT S02E09 and just got Flynn getting praised for his singing voice.
posted by porpoise at 7:17 PM on April 10, 2015
posted by porpoise at 7:17 PM on April 10, 2015
I more-or-less liked the first season, but lost a lot of interest in the second season. I'm not sure I actually finished watching the second season, actually. I'll probably peek in on S3, but I haven't any plan to watch it in earnest.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:07 AM on April 12, 2015
posted by Thorzdad at 10:07 AM on April 12, 2015
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In Discworld analogy, the Big Bad are the Unmentionables (pre-reform Cable Street Particlars) and the good guys are Sam Vime's new way of hiring rational and reasonable people to investigate and solve crimes.
posted by porpoise at 6:38 PM on March 29, 2015