Sometimes, less is more. But sometimes, there’s delirious pleasure in heaping more upon more. Like, for example, when you take a perfectly wonderful candy bar—a symphony itself of caramel, nougat, peanuts, and chocolate—and freeze it onto a stick, then dip the thing in batter and deep-fry it. On paper, even to a lover of sweets, the idea may read like needlessly piling virtue upon virtue, with the risk that you end up with nothing that’s distinctly anything and which tastes merely of greasy excess. But of course, when such an ambitiously layered confection works, it’s genius, and Ripper Street reminds me simultaneously of lots of different things while somehow being its own magnificently mashed-up thing.
BBC America just began airing the series which had its debut in the UK last year. It’s set in Whitechapel, London’s East End, circa 1889, and features the police of H Division, notably Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) and his tough-as-nails Detective Sergeant Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn). Reid is a man of reason and dedication, dismayed at the continuing hysteria and ghoulishness on his turf caused by the Ripper’s recent crimes. He previously investigated those crimes with the now-haunted and still-possessive Chief Inspector Fred Abberline, who will reappear along with rumors of the Ripper’s resurgence.
If you’re spoiler sensitive, view the premiere before reading on.
[Thankfully, nothing’s only as it appears on Ripper Street...]
Read the full article