It was only a matter of time before we got another Jack the Ripper spin-off. The sport was to try and guess which genre or genres they were going to attempt to combine it with this time.
The BBC have obviously racked their brains over this one, and after diligently flicking around a few hundred digital channels, have come up with the franchise's latest contrived mash-up: Jack the Ripper meets CSI in the Wild West.
With "Whitechapel", ITV have also had a stab (no pun intended) at Jack. But unlike ITV's modern day setting, the Beeb's version is set in 1889 and miraculously resists the temptation of casting the usually ever-present Phil Davis. Ripper Street is set six months after Jack the Ripper began his gory exploits, and everyone is more than a little jumpy.
The "Deadwood" Wild West filming style and heavy-handed, discordant music score make Ripper Street feel like a darker, nastier version of Guy Ritchie's 2009 re-make of Sherlock Holmes, and the programme's brutal, blood-spitting, flesh ripping visuals would be just as at home in a Quentin Tarantino movie.
Jerome Flynn used to be in pop duo Robson and Jerome. I will never forgive him for that, but I have to admit he is rather good in Ripper Street. As is Matthew Macfadyen as Detective Inspector Edmund Reid, a smart, progressive copper intent on dragging the Met out of the Dark Ages and into the glossy, soft focus crime labs of CSI Miami.
This unlikely League of Gentlemen is completed by an American surgeon played by Adam Rothenberg – an ex-employee of the Pinkertons Detective Agency, drafted in, no doubt, to more graphically underline the Wild West parallel.
So, we discover a slaughtered prostitute in a dark alley. She's all slit up a treat, proper nasty-like, guv'nor, and everyone immediately assumes it was Jack. But not clean-cut, modern-thinking Inspector Reid. He pins a load of photos of Jack's previous victims on a great big blackboard and paces up and down peering at them like Mandy Patinkin in an episode of Homeland. Will this method of policing ever catch on? Jack the Ripper has been turned into movies, musicals, TV shows, cartoons and board games. No doubt it will one day be turned into a quiz show hosted by Noel Edmonds or a 'Big Brother"-style reality show set in a police station in Whitechapel. In the meantime, Ripper Street is probably one of the more inventive incarnations of the franchise, and is likely to maintain a strong following, if only among fans of Robson and Jerome.
Read more reviews at Mouthbox.co.uk
The BBC have obviously racked their brains over this one, and after diligently flicking around a few hundred digital channels, have come up with the franchise's latest contrived mash-up: Jack the Ripper meets CSI in the Wild West.
With "Whitechapel", ITV have also had a stab (no pun intended) at Jack. But unlike ITV's modern day setting, the Beeb's version is set in 1889 and miraculously resists the temptation of casting the usually ever-present Phil Davis. Ripper Street is set six months after Jack the Ripper began his gory exploits, and everyone is more than a little jumpy.
The "Deadwood" Wild West filming style and heavy-handed, discordant music score make Ripper Street feel like a darker, nastier version of Guy Ritchie's 2009 re-make of Sherlock Holmes, and the programme's brutal, blood-spitting, flesh ripping visuals would be just as at home in a Quentin Tarantino movie.
Jerome Flynn used to be in pop duo Robson and Jerome. I will never forgive him for that, but I have to admit he is rather good in Ripper Street. As is Matthew Macfadyen as Detective Inspector Edmund Reid, a smart, progressive copper intent on dragging the Met out of the Dark Ages and into the glossy, soft focus crime labs of CSI Miami.
This unlikely League of Gentlemen is completed by an American surgeon played by Adam Rothenberg – an ex-employee of the Pinkertons Detective Agency, drafted in, no doubt, to more graphically underline the Wild West parallel.
So, we discover a slaughtered prostitute in a dark alley. She's all slit up a treat, proper nasty-like, guv'nor, and everyone immediately assumes it was Jack. But not clean-cut, modern-thinking Inspector Reid. He pins a load of photos of Jack's previous victims on a great big blackboard and paces up and down peering at them like Mandy Patinkin in an episode of Homeland. Will this method of policing ever catch on? Jack the Ripper has been turned into movies, musicals, TV shows, cartoons and board games. No doubt it will one day be turned into a quiz show hosted by Noel Edmonds or a 'Big Brother"-style reality show set in a police station in Whitechapel. In the meantime, Ripper Street is probably one of the more inventive incarnations of the franchise, and is likely to maintain a strong following, if only among fans of Robson and Jerome.
Read more reviews at Mouthbox.co.uk