Ripper Street British Import With Sex and Sleuths By MIKE HALE (NEW YORK TIMES)

Setting a cop show in the slums of East London in 1889 gives you several advantages. Violence, for one: Among the first things we see in “Ripper Street,” a new British drama beginning on Saturday night on BBC America, is an undercover policeman pausing during a bare-knuckle fight to pull an opponent’s tooth out of his hand.


Sex, for another: the two most prominent female characters in the show are prostitutes, or tarts (“taaarts”), in the language of the time. The first episode predictably joins these elements by making a tart the target of violence.

This is not to condemn “Ripper Street,” which has its satisfactions, but to indicate the mind-set at work. As a period police procedural, it’s more successful than “Copper,” set in 1860s New York and also shown on BBC America. But it’s not that much more imaginative; someone wanted a late-Victorian “Law & Order,” and that’s what was delivered.

“Ripper Street” is, however, reasonably clever and sometimes even witty in its depictions of forward-thinking detectives pioneering the forensic methods and investigative procedures that will eventually become the grist for a thousand television shows. And in Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg and particularly Matthew Macfadyen, it has a sharp and appealing group of actors to play its central cop triangle.

The undisputed star of the show is Mr. Macfadyen as Edmund Reid, a detective inspector with crusading instincts who wants both to modernize and to humanize the police force. But he’s not the all-seeing, Holmesian genius so prevalent in current shows, who acts out for 45 minutes before single-handedly solving the mystery.

In a moderately interesting twist, “Ripper Street” splits the glory between Reid and Homer Jackson (Mr. Rothenberg), an American and former Pinkerton agent who has come to London, fleeing some dark secret in his past. Deputized by Reid, Jackson supplies most of the close analysis of fibers, skin and gaping wounds (typically on the bodies of young women, of course) while tweaking the more old-fashioned sensibilities of Reid’s stalwart sergeant, Drake (Mr. Flynn, known here for playing the warrior Bronn in “Game of Thrones”).

The fun of the show comes partly from the interplay among these actors, and partly from the way it juxtaposes the muck and murderousness of the East End shortly after the days of Jack the Ripper (hence the title) with the onset of the modern world.


READ MORE: http://tv.nytimes.com/2013/01/19/arts/television/ripper-street-with-matthew-macfadyen-on-bbc-america.html

'Ripper Street' Stars Macfadyen, 1880s London by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS January 18, 2013 5:42 PM (NPR)

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Matthew Macfadyen is perfectly presentable in jeans and a crewneck sweater that coordinates nicely with the blue of his eyes.

But the look is far from the elegant attire he wore as Mr. Darcy opposite Keira Knightley's Elizabeth in the 2005 film "Pride & Prejudice." And his posture is just as casual, which he acknowledges might offend the aristocratic character's diehard fans.

"You're slouching! What are you doing? Stand up straight, man!" Macfadyen says, teasing himself.

He looks back fondly on what he calls the "iconic" role drawn from Jane Austen's novel. But the British actor who's also known to audiences for his part as an intelligence officer in the series "MI-5" ("Spooks" in the U.K.) welcomes the chance to switch gears.

"I, as most actors, want to mix it up and do different things. Otherwise it gets boring and tiresome, not only for yourself but for everyone else seeing you do the same kind of thing," he said. "The joy of being an actor is to play different parts, do something different."

Macfadyen's latest chance for diversity comes in "Ripper Street," an 1880s police drama set on the gritty and untamed streets of London's East End around the period that serial killer Jack the Ripper terrorized the area.

The series, starring Macfadyen as Detective Inspector Edmund Reid, debuts Saturday (9 p.m. EST) on BBC America after starting its British run this month. BBC America is home to another rough-and-tumble, 18th-century police drama, "Copper," set in 1860s New York City and the channel's first original scripted series.

The mysterious and brutal Jack the Ripper has been recycled throughout pop culture in films including 1979's "Time After Time" and 2001's "From Hell" with Johnny Depp. But series creator Richard Warlow said the killer is a backdrop and invisible character for "Ripper Street."

"What we wanted to do really was to tell stories about the streets down which he walked and committed his crimes in the wake of those terrible murders," Warlow said, "and how it affected the community and, most importantly, the police that tried and failed to catch him."

Each episode will include what he called a "stand-alone crime" as well as pull at the thread of Reid's life, including those surrounding him at work and at home.


READ MORE: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=169740291

‘Copper’ Takes Aim at a Fresh Kind of Police Drama (WALL STREET JOURNAL) By Erica E. Phillips

“I think in the real world you can’t really believe in heroes,” says Tom Weston-Jones in a soft British accent. “It’s nice when people have contradictions.” That theme is clearly central in BBC America’s first original scripted series “Copper.” Weston-Jones plays the lead role of Kevin Corcoran, a detective—or “copper” in the vernacular of the day—who’s recently returned to New York City after fighting in the Civil War.

Corcoran’s true passion is caught up in the mystery of his wife’s disappearance and his daughter’s murder, which took place while he was away. But he spends his days fighting crime and solving murder cases with the help of two scruffy partners, the intelligent proprietor of Eva’s Paradise brothel (Franka Potente) and a few old buddies from the war.

One of those buddies is African-American doctor Matthew Freeman (Ato Essandoh), who conducts a forensic examination of a murder victim on the sly as a favor to Corcoran in the pilot episode. That scene played something like a 19th Century “CSI,” but Weston-Jones was quick to distinguish “Copper” from the typical network-TV crime drama. “It’s not a procedural … the overall story will draw you in,” he said. “The writers want the audience to be interested in the people rather than titillation of a new murder every week.”

Relatively unknown on this side of the Atlantic, the 25-year-old actor grew up in Dubai and moved to the U.K. for school. He trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which legendary actor Laurence Olivier established in the 1940s. We chatted with Weston-Jones about the help he had developing his near-flawless American accent, what it was like to work with Potente (“Run Lola Run,” “The Bourne Supremacy”) and an oddly-named band he frequently mentions on Twitter. The following is an edited transcript.