Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, MyAnna Buring, Lucy Cohu, David Dawson, Ruta Gudmintas, Rebecca Grimes, Linal Haft, Amanda Hale, Charlene McKenna, Kristian Nairn, David Oakes, Clive Russell.
The final episode of Ripper Street, What Use Our Work, made sure the Victorian crime drama finished on a stunning high. With Chief Inspector Fred Abberline, portrayed by Clive Russell, so sure that he has finally caught the infamous Jack the Ripper that he is blinded by unreason, unsound evidence and professional grief to see that Captain Homer Jackson was innocent of the brutal murders that stalked London’s Whitechapel in 1888.
The title of the series may have alluded to more than the killer getting some 21st century television justice and pointing the finger at a possible suspect from the time, as in Michael Caine and Ray McAnally’s 1988 television film Jack the Ripper or even Patricia Cornwell’s book Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper-Case Closed had alluded to doing but in that lay the genius of the television programme. With only passing comments and with the use of two actors portraying two very real policemen who were involved at the time of the murders, the shadow of Jack the Ripper has been only glimpsed through the eyes and minds of Detective Reid and the anguish of Abberline.
With Captain Homer Jackson, played by a very superb Adam Rothenberg, who along with Jerome Flynn has been the real surprise of the series, languishing in jail and only Reid having any belief in him, it is up to Reid and his men to catch a man who may hold a secret that will free the dubious Pinkerton man and also unburden Reid of his greatest tragedy also.
The way in which the series has portrayed Abberline may not be historically accurate, however it has reached deep into the man’s psyche and with Clive Russell’s much underrated acting has shown that the man was crippled psychologically by his failure to protect the women in the East End of London. In that he also went to his death as a victim of the age and the cruelty bestowed by the madman.
The series has had its detractors and also its plaudits but it has been a striking series, one that has gripped those who have enjoyed the idea of early police forensic work and those who used it to its maximum benefit.
Ripper Street has been a wonderful series that has finished on absolute high and has proved compulsive viewing.
Ian D. Hall