Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, MyAnna Buring, Charlene McKenna, Lydia Wilson, David Wilmot, Clive Russell, David Dawson, John O’ Connor, Jason Manford, Louise Brealey, Anna Burnett, John Heffernan, Philip Arditti, Georgia Rich, Philip Judge, Sophia La Porta, Edgar Morton, Alicia Gerrard, Colin Alltree, Neil Broome.
Inspector Reid is missing and after the events in recent Whitechapel history it’s not a bad thing that his life is to be missing from the annals of the area’s police investigations, for who would trust a murderer, even one provoked, to carry out the biggest job in the London?
With Reid away the villainy in Whitechapel will play and when the mysterious death of a fraudulent clairvoyant comes to attention of Bennett Drake and his men, the supernatural, the call from beyond the mortal coil, feels less like one in which the mean streets of the borough is used to and one in which can be elevated to anywhere within the city of London.
Ashes and Diamonds was truly the chance for Jerome Flynn to come out from underneath the shadows set down by the ever impressive Matthew Macfadyen and without a single blink of his eye, the episode largely remained intact, and in some cases flourished, without Detective Inspector Reid pulling the people of Whitechapel to his own strings. Yet as a piece of drama without the one factual person to anchor it to the events that take place outside the city of London in those dark days of distrust and fear after Jack the Ripper, it does to an extent have a slightly unfamiliar pattern to it, almost as if it could be a generic police drama if allowed to slide.
Jerome Flynn though does carry the episode very well and with Adam Rothenberg as Captain Jackson returning to a valued position under Detective Drake, certainly more trusted that he been due to his reckless behaviour under Reid’s command and a very cool performance by Sophia La Porta as Juniper Kohl, one of the young dancing girls frequenting the Whitechapel stage with dreams far outstripping her talent, Ashes and Diamonds is a worthy episode in the Ripper Street Cannon.
Ashes and Diamonds, the circle of expensive life and one that takes millions of years to process as a natural cycle in death, yet it also signifies continuance, it offers, like the phoenix from the fire, redemption and hope, it is a hope that the episode ends well upon.
A gripping episode and one that plays out well as the evolution of police forensic science starts to get its grip on the solving of murder.
Ian D. Hall