Picture from B.B.C. Television.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, MyAnna Buring, Charlene McKenna, Amanda Hale, Jonathon Barnwell, David Wilmot, Michael Smiley, Hugh O’ Conor, Giacomo Mancini, Joe Gilgun.
When it comes to British crime drama, you don’t get much better than basing the story on real events or authentic people and by placing in it in the sometimes squalid and mean streets of late Victorian era Whitchapel, it surely should be a ratings winner. Ripper Street continues the superb start it made in episode one and brings the claustrophobic, disease ridden and above the law contempt even closer to home in the second episode, In My Protection.
The second episode looks at the relationship between the three main male characters of Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn and the superb Adam Rothenberg and from those that they are duty bound to protect, even those that go beyond the accepted rules and show their contempt openly for the police. In George Lusk, captured in all his brutal excess perfectly by Michael Smiley, the battle lines are drawn as the Chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee and Detective Inspector Edmund Reid, the ever suave Matthew Macfadyen, come to blows over the treatment of a young boy accused of murder.
There is an indisputable sense of unease at the sight of a mob baying for blood, which is only tempered by the glimpse of the violent Fagan like character leading the disturbed hoards of rabid children. Between George Lusk and the brutal child master Carmichael, the police and detectives of H Division are caught between the devil and the devil’s advocate; it is up to the viewer to decide which is which.
The destitution in which the children are forced to live is in equal measure to the brutality that is meted out by the psychopathic Carmichael to anyone who stands in his way of turning a profit and those that stand between him and the twisted version of family and solidarity he stands for. Shocking in its viciousness, excellent in its portrayal, Ripper Street continues to be superb Sunday night viewing.
Ian D. Hall