Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Mathew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, Emma Rigby, Jonathon Hobbs, Paul McGann, Anton Lesser, MyAnna Burling, Charlene McKenna, David Wilmot, Amanda Hale.
The fourth episode of the gripping Ripper Street, the evocative The Good of This City, had more than a nod to the Timberlake Wertenbaker play Our Country’s Good. Whereas though no one was being transported halfway around the world to a penal colony that would be the death of most of those that originally were sent there, there was still the utter displeasure in seeing the locals of Whitechapel being compulsory evicted from their homes in the name of progress.
Victorian evolution meets 19th century secrets and shame in this episode and where the advancement of the underground railway system was met with marvel and despair there is was hiding the disgust on Inspector Reid’s face as he came face to face with the other side of Victorian science progress in the local Bedlam and the care of Doctor Crabbe, portrayed with unnerving and unsettling ability by Anton Lesser.
Perhaps it was with some sense of the celebration that the series would highlight the new underground system with its 150th anniversary going on. However those it displaced with no sense of where they would end up was rife. The clearance of the London slums was shown to be at the behest of London County Council member Stanley J. Bone, played by the ever excellent Paul McGann, and it seems he would stop at nothing to make sure that the railway was laid.
The real crime, as the story goes, was a murder in the area. This was quickly wrapped up, not with early forensic work by the shadowy American captain, but with the art of deduction by Inspector Reid. This bought the wonderful MyAnna Burling more into the story of which she really has been slightly overlooked in her role as the brothel keeper and the superb Emma Rigby as the former prostitute Lucy Eames. It seems there are many secrets in Whitechapel and Lucy and Stanley J. Bone share a couple of big ones.
Although it would have taken a story of monumental brilliance to top last week’s story, The Good of our City touched on many issues that Victorian England would have swept under the city and was for that a great and powerful piece of writing.
Ian D. Hall