"These streets demand your vigilance..."
If you had been driving down Con Colbert Road in Dublin this summer, or were a passenger on a train through Heuston Station, you would never have suspected that just a stone’s throw away, gruesome murders, arrests, and activities involving brothel madams, were taking place. But deep in the troughs of Clancy Barracks this summer lay Whitechapel residents, who were knee deep in corsets, petticoats and bodices; and that was just the men who frequented the brothel. For Clancy Barracks, once home to Ireland’s soldiers, was the residency of BBC drama
Ripper Street for 19 weeks, where crew from the BBC, Dublin’s Element Pictures and the UK’s Tiger Aspect Productions and Lookout Point were set up. To stumble upon that cobbled location with its authentic 15th century stones, high stone walls and idle terraced houses was to step back into the solemn Victorian landscape of East London in the late 1880s - six months since the last Jack the Ripper killing, to be exact; to a haunted place slowly emerging into a fragile peace, hopeful that this killer’s reign of terror might at last have run its course. Nowhere is this truer than in the corridors of H Division - the police 'Precinct from Hell' charged with keeping order in the district of Whitechapel- now in a chaotic state following a tumultuous time for London and reported infamously worldwide. Its men hunted this maniac - and failed to find him.
Ripper Street, a new eight part drama series, is their story.
H Division was responsible for policing a relatively small area of just 1¼ square miles, yet into that space were packed some 67,000 people: a seething, bustling mass of the poor and dispossessed. Between the factories, rookeries, chop shops and pubs that mark out this maelstrom moves Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (
Matthew Macfadyen) – a forward thinking detective haunted by a tragic past mistake. Accompanied by the ever loyal local brawn of Detective Sergeant Bennett Drake (
Jerome Flynn) and the mercurial brilliance of the US Army surgeon and one-time Pinkerton detective, Captain Homer Jackson (
Adam Rothenberg), Reid seeks to bring justice to a world that is forever on the brink of mayhem.
Yet, Ripper Street is not another backward-looking 'Hunt the Ripper' story, but more a fictionalised trek into the heart of a London borough living in the blood soaked aftermath of that forever anonymous killer. It is an investigative journey into a world of bare-knuckle boxing, early pornography and copycat murders about the dedicated policemen for whom life – and crime – go on. "It’s not an area that was short of vicious murders and any woman found murdered with a knife in the consequent months was held up as a Ripper murder," explains director Tom Shankland. "So we’ll touch on Ripper in that way but not dig anybody up or change the canonical five." Indeed, this is not the comparatively polite Dickens-esq world of Victorian London, but an all together more visceral affair. "All the period depictions I’d seen of that particular crime story had almost been a bit too well behaved in a slightly slower way and shots have to be a bit wider to show off the nice furniture," he adds. "But if you can think of something awful [in Victorian London], it was happening."
By the late 1800s, London was the largest capital in the world and the centre of the ever-increasing British empire. Queen Victoria had been on the throne for over 50 years and the public face of Britain reflected Victoria’s lifestyle; proud, dignified and above all proper. It was the centre of empire, a centre of culture, a centre of finance, communication and transportation, with a new emerging mass media called the new journalism, later to be dubbed the tabloids. However, right on its doorstep in the East End lay the district of Whitechapel. "Seedy by any standards, it was a crime-ridden sordid quarter, where residents lived in abject poverty," states Ricky Cobb, courtesy of Jack the Ripper Tour. "It was an area of doss houses, sweatshops, abattoirs, overcrowded slums, pubs, a few shops and warehouses, leavened with a row or two of respectably kept cottages. It housed London’s worst slums and the poverty of its inhabitants was appalling. In fact, malnutrition and disease were so widespread that its inhabitants had about a 50/50 chance of living past the age of five years old."
"Whitechapel was a notoriously hard area to live in", confirms noted researcher, Neil Bell. "Situated just north of the London Docks, it was one of the first areas a newly landed immigrant would find themselves, wide-eyed and not knowing what was about to hit them." The area was the main immigrant district due in part to the large influx of Jewish, Irish and Russian. The potato famine had seen a large influx of Irish immigrants in the mid 1800′s along with the Jewish who arrived in thousands whilst fleeing persecution in Russia, Germany and Poland. In only a single decade, the Jewish population had risen to over 50,000. With so many different nationalities, they all had one thing in common: Every day was a struggle for survival. "Work was rare and in Whitechapel, men would literally fight each other with pickaxe handles for jobs," reveals Bell. "Alcohol was plentiful and cheap so Public Houses and Beer Shops dominated almost every street. With little else to do, men and women would sooner spend what little money they had on booze. The sanitary conditions and poor quality of the water supply meant that beer and gin were often the safest drinks around. Children were weaned on to it and it is with little wonder that alcoholism was rife."
At the same time, the West End of London was undergoing massive renovation and prosperity, opening up new concert halls, music halls, restaurants and hotels. "As the city expanded, cheap housing was now being demolished to make way for warehouses and business offices, which forced more people into smaller areas," says Cobb. "Overcrowding and a shortage of housing created the "Abyss of Whitechapel". For most of the population in the East End, one lived and died in the same neighborhood in which they were born. Hope was in short supply." For the poor and destitute, common lodging houses offered a bed for the night. Here you would be cramped into a small dormitory with up to 80 others and for 4 pence you could get a bed which was practically a coffin lying on the ground. "For tuppence you could lean against a rope, which was tied from one end of the wall to the other," notes Cobb. "Every night 8,500 men, women and children would seek shelter within these walls."
These doss houses lay just off the main roads of commercial streets. Areas such as Thrawl street, Flower and Dean and Dorset street (a street so bad the police wouldn’t go down unless they were in teams of four) were run by greedy landlords that had one motto: ‘No pay no stay.’ No money meant the night in doorways, lavatories or huddled up in the church park. For men, work could sometimes be obtained down by the docks, offloading ships or as market porters. For women, work was scarce and any work they could find paid very little to be able to survive, so out of sheer desperation many turned to the oldest profession in the world, prostitution.
"According to one account, the women of the East End at the time were so destitute that they would sell themselves for as little as three pence, or a stale loaf of bread," says Cobb. "In Oct 1888, the Metropolitan police estimated there were just over 1,200 prostitutes working the streets in Whitechapel alone. This was almost certainly an underestimate, for sheer want drove many more to occasional prostitution. This was their only means of income and survival. With the little money they earned, most would seek comfort in alcohol as the only refuge from reality. Drink was cheap and drunkenness rife, at any time of day or night, leading to brutality and violence as a direct result. Brawls were commonplace and, as one Whitechapel inhabitant put it, cries of 'Murder!' were nothing unusual in the street."
In short, it was a world in which Jack the Ripper would have no problem finding a victim. "These elements combined to make living in the area a combustible dog-eat-dog world. When you add to the Whitechapel mix the Bearer Uppers, the Bug Hunters, the Demanders, the Rollers, the Lurkers and any of the wonderfully named Villains, Criminals, Robbers, Pimps and Thugs, of which there were thousands, then you have an idea of the dark and desperate world the men of H Division worked in," says Bell, with almost unseemly relish.
Operating out of its Headquarters, based at the famous Scotland Yard, The Met force was broken down into 4 Districts – Northern, Eastern, Western and Southern. Within these Districts were jurisdictions known as Divisions and each Division was given its own letter of the Alphabet. Initially there were only 6 Divisions; however, by 1888 these had expanded to 22 — and if you were to become a Police Constable in 1888, one of the most notorious and feared Divisions to be posted to was that of H Division, Whitechapel. "The Division was headed by Superintendent Thomas Arnold and, as with every Division in the Met, it was split into two, Uniformed and The Criminal Investigation Department, or CID for short," states Bell. "The Uniformed men concentrated on the day to day policing of the area whereas CID undertook Detective work. The Uniformed side was led by acting Chief Inspector John West who reported directly to Superintendent Arnold."
It was into this world that your regular Police Constable walked his beat. A maze of entries, alleyways and courtyards were all lit by single gas lamps, giving out about 6 feet of light that at times were so thick, that you would struggle to see your own hand in front of your face. Sanitation was practically non-existent and people would throw their raw sewage into the street, making the stench of the whole district unbearable. Dressed neatly in his dark blue Melton uniform, with his Brunswick star glinting upon his helmet and his Collar number (ID) shining, the Bobby walked the the back streets, dark alleyways and filthy courts armed with regulation-issued truncheon for defense and his oil-fueled Bulls Eye lamp for light. Inside his collar he wore a leather stock which helped him survive the most common of attacks upon the Police, garrotting.
During the Jack the Ripper Murders of 1888, their numbers were bolstered by the temporary recruitment of uniformed Constables to their ranks, as well as the return of one of their most popular of Detectives, Frederick Abberline. "Abberline had been in H Division CID ever since his promotion to Local Detective Inspector in 1873 and he soon gained a reputation for being an excellent one," notes Bell. "Earning his stripes in the most difficult District in London enhanced his reputation, and by 1887 his superiors summoned him to work within Scotland Yard itself as part of the famous Central Office Detective Force."
However during the Ripper murders it was felt that the H Division needed someone with area experience to aid the new Local Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (who was a greatly reputed Detective himself) and to liaise with the freshly appointed Head of the Ripper case, Chief Inspector Donald Swanson of Scotland Yard. Swanson’s role was to be the Met Commissioner Sir Charles Warrens 'eyes and ears' on the case. Every piece of information pertaining to the murders went through him. Between Swanson, Abberline and Reid’s H Division, Scotland Yard and the Met had what they thought was a formidable Detective Department hunting the killer known as Jack the Ripper.
Though these men never managed to bring their notorious quarry to justice, it was not through any lack of trying. "It must be noted that forensics in 1888 was virtually non-existent," reasons Bell. "Fingerprinting was not used by the Met until 3 years later in 1891, and the best you could get from a blood test was to determine if it was mammalian or not. The best chance of a conviction was to either locate damning evidence on a person, a confession or capturing the murder in the act. To do this, the Met sent men out in various disguises in to Pubs to obtain gossip and to mill the streets with the homeless and unemployed just in hopes of picking up some information. They also wandered the dangerous streets at night, arresting anyone who acted suspicious. However, it was all in vain. By 1896, the Whitechapel Murderer, aka Jack the Ripper, had not been brought to task and the investigation wound down."
The central character in Ripper Street, Edmund Reid, is therefore based on a policeman at the heart of the Ripper investigations, but seemingly only in name. "He had already been a Pastry Cook and Ships Steward before joining the Met," adds Bell by way of putting more flesh on the bones. "Originally posted to nearby J Division in Bethnal Green, Reid took on Abberline’s role when the former moved to Scotland Yard just prior to the beginning of the Jack the Ripper murders in 1888. He was noted as 'one of the most remarkable men of the century' by the Newspaper The Weekly Dispatch when they wrote about him upon his retirement in 1896. Though an excellent Detective, Reid was also a most noted amateur Actor and Singer."
"He was a remarkable man," agrees Matthew Macfadyen, "but I didn’t base it on him. He was also a balloonist, and a druid, and 5 ft 6. I think he was actually the first man to jump out of a balloon with a parachute but I have to stress that I'm not doing that." The police would have felt incredibly modern at the time, thinks the former Spooks actor. "In many ways they were stumbling around a bit, before scientific advancement, fingerprints and forensics. Reid is a very dedicated, forward thinking policeman. What I find interesting about him is that there’s nothing jaded or on the back foot about him. I wanted to get away from the sort of classic, seen it all, done it all copper and he’s definitely not that. He’s quite progressive and interested in technology and the innovations of the age, which were enormous, especially in Victorian times. So he’s an interesting character. He’s got quite a lot of anger and he has a fairly dark past. He has made a terrible mistake and that sort of haunts him. So, there’s a lot to play with. It’s good fun."
Much of the fun of Ripper Street comes the central dynamic of its three world-weary protagonists. "I certainly love acting with those two and the way it’s written they complement each other very well," agrees Macfadyen. "There’s me, who’s the sort of driving force of the threesome; and then there’s Drake played by Jerome who’s got this lovely quality - he’s the brawn and he’s also got a great sincerity and strength to him; and then there’s Jackson played by Adam, who’s just sort of brilliant, he’s got a brilliant mind - I mean he’s wayward and he’s infuriating but he’s incredibly gifted at forensics and pathology and all the rest of it. As a threesome they sort of work really well. And there’s respect and there’s also mistrust. And there’s antagonism between the three of them so it’s a good mix. I hope!"
"Drake would do anything for Inspector Reid," adds Game of Thrones standout, Jerome Flynn. "He’s like his Colonel and he’s an example of a successful, strong, upright moralistic man. So I think he idolises him quite a lot and is extremely loyal to him. And then Jackson comes into the picture, he’s obviously been around a while but I don’t think Bennett Drake is at all pleased about that or about how keen Reid is to get Jackson in and to ask his advice and use his expertise." There is, he feels, a streak of personal jealously underneath. "There’s a certain American swagger about Jackson that Bennet Drake, I think, would like to have but wouldn’t admit that to himself," he says. "Jackson’s off drinking and whoring and not trapped by the system. Bennett, on the other hand, is trapped by the system and thinks that’s a good thing and the best way to be. And yet he’s wound up by Jackson. I think he sees in him a man he’d like to be, a part of him that has been locked up."
Drake has been locked up and buttoned down for seven or eight years H division srvice by the time we meet him. "And he had been in the army for quite a long time from his 20s, and served a lot and he’d been fighting in Sudan," adds Flynn. "I’ve got a feeling that Inspector Reid had some kind of influence on his life before he actually joined the police force. It is Reid who persuades him to come along. He’s a very loyal man and especially so to Reid." People have called his character a bit of a pit bull but Flynn sees him more as a refined muscle head. "He’s been institutionalised quite early on," he explains. "I think there was some kind of care home and then the army and then the police force so that’s his family. Essentially, he’s quite a lonely man, but I think he’s longing to have a life like his Inspector Reid. You know, to be happily married and have that couched around him because it’s something he’s never had." Above all else, Drake wishes to find a way to escape his thug status and the dehumanising memories he carries with him.
By contrast, American army surgeon Jackson has a thirst for vice in all its forms: women; booze; drugs; gambling. "He is a kind of a jack-of-all-trades and on the darker side of the spectrum," laughs Adam Rothenberg. "He doesn’t quite fit into the world of Whitechapel. He is a definite outsider in this world which is no small feat in this area of London at the time when almost everyone is a sort of outsider. Everyone is dangerous. Jackson is definitely not being up front with who he is." Rothenberg believes the biggest appeal of his character is that core enigma. "You’re very aware that you’re not filled in on his whole story and I think Jackson relishes that," he says. "I also think there’s probably an element of Jackson, where he’s not telling you the whole truth, probably because he’s not even aware of the whole truth. He’s very impulsive. He’s very wild and he’s a victim of his own internal drives. And I think that’s one of the fun things you get when you watch him because he’s not someone who makes decisions so much as he gets led around by forces inside him that most sane people don’t listen to." In that way he is a conduit for the outsider’s perspective on the world of Ripper Street. "I think through his eyes you get to see how peculiar a world it is," he agrees. "It’s almost as if someone from today would be if transplanted in to Victorian London. I think he’s very much a surrogate for the audience in a lot of ways. He is different from anyone the other characters have ever met."
Arriving with Jackson- and connected to him for mysterious reasons that MyAnna Buring is not revealing- is Long Susan. "Susan’s this well-spoken, obviously educated woman who is running a brothel," says Buring, before adding: "the best brothel in East London, I’ll have you know!" We don’t really know much about her past when we first meet her but there is a sense that perhaps she’s concealing something. "East London is notorious for attracting characters who want to harbour secrets and run away from some kind of a past," she reasons. "So obviously East London has served her well in that way. And she’s arrived here with Jackson, who she seems to have a sort of love/hate relationship with." Buring says she was really drawn to Long Susan because she was this incredibly strong independent woman who has forged a life for herself in which she is comparably autonomous to a lot of women of the time. "As opposed to being a two dimensional prop she’s a real character who has a real story arc throughout the series," she enthuses. "And I think that’s always really interesting to play. I think it’s much more interesting as an actor to play a character who you don’t immediately understand, that you peel the layers off."
A further piece in the puzzle is Rose Erskine; star-attraction at Long Susan's salubrious establishment on Tenter Street, who dreams of travels, riches and success on the stage. "I love her so much because she’s really feisty," says rising Irish star Charlene McKenna. "She’s really 'street' in that she really just says it like it is. On another level she is very manipulative and incredibly savvy. There’s a romantic side to her too. She’s a dreamer and a fantasist, she has so many layers. She’s just so much fun to play with." Longing to break free from the role for which life seems to have marked her out, McKenna states that it was decided from very early on that she would not simply be the 'tart with a heart'. "She has one but it’s not like she’s going to come good," she says. "She’s ambitious. She’s going to escape. She’s going to see to it that she gets out. She’ll do everything she can to make her dream for herself come true. I love all that. I love it. She’s just different. She’s multi-layered."
Finally there is Inspector Edmund Reid’s wife, Emily (Amanda Hale), once the happy spouse of a well-respected and ambitious young policeman, and a devoted mother to their beloved daughter. But her life has since changed dramatically. While she and her husband still love each other, their life together has been irretrievably altered by shared tragedy – the full details of which are not revealed. Reid carries a serious injury to his left shoulder that attests to this and only a very few know how he came by the wounds. None of them talk about it because what they see is a man fighting to find someone from his past – someone many believe to be a ghost. Both have different means of coping with this loss. Where Emily seeks solace in church and patronage for her charity efforts, Reid chooses only denial. Any time he allows himself away from work, he is to be found sitting attentive in the lecture halls of The Royal Academy or The Royal Institute; the knowledge he gains here aiding him in his investigations. Before this pain separated them, however, they were ideally suited. Emily’s intelligence and curiosity challenged and complemented Reid. Now, with an emotional gulf between them, Emily finds herself searching for new ways to channel her energies.
The first episode of Ripper Street, 'I Need Light', is especially gruesome and sordid, notes the Telegraph's Catherine Gee; whilst the Independent labels it "of a far more adult nature than might be expected with violence and a lot of sex and nudity." The action begins six months after the horrors, when the hysteria around them can still ignite mob mayhem. So when someone shouts, 'They've found a tart, inspector – she's been ripped,' a rabble descends on the alleyway crime scene and Inspector Reid has his work cut out preserving the evidence. Brutally murdered and with the hallmark signs of the Ripper upon her, one time H Division boss, Chief Inspector Abberline (Clive Russell), believes it Jack’s return, but Reid – now the precinct’s new master – suspects a different evil at work. Taking a more scientific approach to crime solving, Reid's new-fangled ideas are little understood by diehards such as his predecessor. There is also conflict with the fledgling press; particularly the Daily Star reporter Fred Best (David Dawson), who scrawls 'Down on Whores' in the alley to stir up further Ripper hysteria to flog papers (It is based on actual events that led to a man called John Pizer being falsely accused). When it turns out that the victim, Maud Thwaite (Sarah Gallagher), had been posing in naughty photographs after her middle-class husband fell on hard times, Reid and his assistants, Drake and Jackson, are slowly drawn into the burgeoning pornographic industry.
The second episode features Ernest Manby (David Coon), a 60-year-old toy maker, beaten to death for a mysterious brass box and the coins in his pocket. The Whitechapel Vigilance Committee presents a culprit in the form of 14-year-old Thomas Gower (Giacomo Mancini), who refuses to deny the charge. Reid – his conscience challenged by a radical lawyer called Eagles (Hugh O'Conor) and orphanage Governess Deborah Goren (Lucy Cohu) – tests the security of the case. Meanwhile, Jackson’s drinking and gambling have led to the loss of the pendant that ties him to his American past – a past that he and Long Susan fear will now be exposed. Ultimately, Reid and Drake find themselves besieged at Miss Goren’s orphanage by the rest of Gower’s vicious child gang and their brutal master, Carmichael (Joseph Gilgun). "[It's] fucking so ace, I can't even tell you, I've grown a moustache and everything," says Gilgun on his involvement in the show. "It's epic, it's grown over my lip and I can curl it. I look like Charles Bronson after a famine. It's a guest lead part so I'm bloody thrilled with it. It's just such a bloody great job."
Later episodes tackle child gangs, bare-knuckle boxing, a cholera outbreak, slum clearances and even terrorism. "Unlike other Jack the Ripper tales, which focus on the murderer himself, Ripper Street is based on the detectives tasked on tracking him down," says writer Richard Warlow. It was this unique take on the subject that proved a big selling point to get the BBC on board. "When we started development, it was this kind of an easy sell, Jack the Ripper helped sell the show, we weren’t interested in telling that story, we were interested in these characters who had gone through something and felt that they had failed massively and they had failed the community," he says. "Each episode is a different case, you go into a different world each week,” notes executive producer Will Gould . "The whole idea is that it’s a cop show, the metropolitan police was just over 50 years old, it’s about cops trying to keep order over chaos basically."
"Some episodes are very Jackson-centric, some are very Drake-centric, and Reid is all the way through, which is something we were very happy to do, to let characters step forward and take on an episode," says Warlow. "The ‘box’ is that it’s a cop show; each week there is a crime and they solve the crime; the big thing is all this fascinating stuff going on around the edges." This fascinating stuff, according to the writers, is Reid’s interest in all things technology. Because – and this is crucial to his belligerent breed of optimism – he has to believe a better day is coming. As such, the character has become both committed technophile and progressive atheist through a faith that the world – and its many despairs – will be healed by science and freedom from suspicion.
Gould elaborates: "The show is quite fascinated by technology, and Reid himself, I think he’s convinced that if tomorrow’s policing was here today then we would have got Jack. They were on the cusp of so many advances in policing, but he’s fascinated by all things technology. The first episode is all about very early cinema, with pictures that move. I think he’s got this kind of belief that it will all come together around the corner." Warlow elabortates: "We’ve been quite research heavy in making sure that in terms of what’s available, autopsies and forensic knowledge, is absolutely bang on, but we’ve pushed the limits, to a year or so. Finger printing was two or three years later so we can never do finger printing on the show, it’s really infuriating. There are lots of other things that you can gently push, but we’re pretty bang on in terms of what was scientifically available."
The actors themselves admit that before they signed on for their roles they weren’t too immersed in the Jack the Ripper story: "For me [I was only familiar] from TV and films really, the Michael Caine Ripper, I remember seeing on TV," says Macfadyen; "I was a big fan of Alan Moore’s film, which was a work of genius, but that’s about as familiar as I was with it," admits Rothenberg; "I didn’t know much except they never caught him," says Flynn.
Macfadyen says he was drawn to the project by the writing. "That’s what either grabs you or doesn’t," he thinks. "And Richard Warlow, the creator and writer, has made a very original thing really. He’s got a wonderful way of creating the language and so this show is sort of bombastic, big and colourful and grimy as well. There’s lots of stuff in there." The sets, he says, are also brilliant. "The designer, Mark Gerhaty, is really a supremely talented man and they’ve all been fantastic. I mean we were in this barracks built in the 1860s so it’s as it was. It’s like a big playground. We jumped around the different sets. There’s a toymakers shop, a pub, an orphanage and an asylum and all kinds of different things, it’s great. It’s really, really lovely."
"The sets are crucially important," agrees Flynn. "If you can walk into a set and feel the reality of it, then immediately you’re not having to work to bring yourself into the character. For me as an actor it’s about being able to believe the world I’m inhabiting in and the character that I’m inhabiting. And so the world they’ve created for Ripper Street in the sets is crucially important because I feel like I’m there. That’s the part of the work I can believe. I’m there because I can feel it. So the sets are crucially important to making that world real."
He says what excited him about the project was the richness of characters. "That made it stand apart from other police dramas," states Flynn. "And the richness of life at that time. It made it interesting. And fun as well and that swagger, like I say, that it has. It’s almost got a western feel to it. It’s not like everybody knows what they’re doing. There is a freedom of life at that time. There’s less control. Life is less controlled and that’s exciting. More and more as society has gone on, especially over here, everyone is more and more controlled and boxed up and you know what you’re doing and you know who the police are. And London at that time was very much out of control. The police hadn’t been there long. It was kind of almost a joke trying to bring law to those streets because it was a lawless place."
Rothenberg believes Ripper Street is fascinating because you’re invited to follow a thought process. "I think that the character of Reid especially can be seen as a real forerunner," he says. "I think that the science and technology these days form a matrix that we live in. We forget that there was a time when people got excited. Excited over the idea of like, dry cell batteries - that was a creative endeavour, you know. Science it could be said, was a new art form at the time. And fascinating, edgy, underground people were fascinated with things like ornithology and geology. The things that we think of as very dry today were actually infused with real passion back then. I think that’s a really nice thing to be reminded of. Ultimately for me the most exciting thing about Ripper Street is the quality of the scripts and the people involved. The subject material is fascinating but unless you had the quality behind it, it wouldn’t work. I mean the writing is brilliant. The actors are brilliant. I’ve never worked with people that are just so on top of what they do. So that’s a very exciting thing. To come into work every day and to know that no one is bored."
Buring reveals she was hooked because there’s a real edginess to the story. "Richard Warlow’s really discovered a really richly textured world," she says. "And above all I think he creates that with the characters he’s chosen to explore. So as opposed to just appealing to elements of the time, that we know anyway, we’re getting to know characters that are new to us. That hopefully it will be a real exciting journey for an audience to take with them." Also, says Buring, "they have essentially assembled the most incredible creative team to create the world of Ripper. Mark Geraghty our production designer is a genius. Every set, every location you go to is just so detailed. It’s so rich. As soon as we walked into Tenter Street, Mark brought this place to life. You know, walking into Jackson’s rooms, suddenly you got a real sense of the character. And he did what a great production designer does. He aids you as an actor because he gives you all these references to use and to work off. References that you wouldn’t necessarily have at your disposal but because they’re there you can use them. And it completely transports you into the world and the life of these characters."
And the final word as to why people should tune in to Ripper Street goes to Charlene McKenna... "It’s a period drama but it’s not stiff," she smiles. "It’s gritty and it’s raw and it’s dirty and it’s sweaty and it’s sexy." Enough said.
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