(SPOILERS) Ripper Street, Series Finale, BBC One Powerful climax to 19th century detective series by Adam Sweeting Monday, 25 February 2013 (THE ARTS DESK)

Victorian villains beware: it's DI Reid (Matthew Macfadyen, left) with DS Drake (Jerome Flynn)

Last week we left Homer Jackson, the raffish ex-Pinkerton detective with the exceedingly chequered past, languishing in jail, after being fitted up for a Ripper-style killing by the murderous Frank Goodnight (played by cultish US actor Edoardo Ballerini). For this week's finale, Matthew Macfadyen's DI Reid urgently needed to get Jackson out again in order to apply his advanced forensic skills to unravelling a white slaving racket.

Jackson was slickly able to prove his own innocence, then quickly extracted crucial clues about the gang who were drugging and kidnapping young women. His medical know-how and boffinly mucking about with test tubes, chemicals and tissue samples have made him a kind of Victorian prototype of CSI's Gil Grissom, and it's reflective of Ripper Street's wider interest in new trends and fashions of its era (Adam Rothenberg as Jackson and MyAnna Buring as Long Susan, pictured below).

Strong characters, generally dynamic stories and a powerful sense of period have meant that Ripper Street has grown steadily as it's gone along. Series two is already under construction


READ MORE: http://www.theartsdesk.com/tv/ripper-street-series-finale-bbc-one

Matthew Macfadyen & CSI: Victoriana comes alive in ‘Ripper Street’

An abundance of evil permeates “Ripper Street.” The latest British crime drama on BBC America is a mixture of the grittier of Charles Dickens’ novels, bloody fisticuffs, beatings, occasionally explicit sex, profanity and Victorian-period CSI-style investigation.  (NEWS TRIBUNE)
TISH WELLS; MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

 Ripper Street" on BBC America, 9 p.m. January 19th, Detective Sergeant Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn) and Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) pursue crime on the streets of 1889 London with the help of Captain Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg), an American. (TIGER ASPECT/BBC/MCT)

An abundance of evil permeates “Ripper Street.”

The latest British crime drama on BBC America is a mixture of the grittier of Charles Dickens’ novels, bloody fisticuffs, beatings, occasionally explicit sex, profanity and Victorian-period CSI-style investigation.

Oh, and it has an American as well. He smokes a lot.

Straight-laced Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen), and his assistant Detective Sergeant Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn from “Game of Thrones”) patrol the East End of London in 1889 — a year after serial killer Jack the Ripper vanished.

The police deal with the constant pervasive fear that the Ripper might return, as well as with prostitution, child gangs, theft and murder.

A guide leading a tour of the places where the Ripper slaughtered his victims stumbles across a dead woman whose body is mutilated a la Ripper. Terror once again grips London, aided and abetted by the questionable journalistic practices of the popular press of the period, when fear and curiosity, not facts, sold newspapers.

It comes down to: Was the woman’s killer really the Ripper or someone else?

Read more here:http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/01/15/2436241/csi-victoriana-comes-alive-in.html#storylink=cpy 

Downton Abbey: Hollywood Star Pleads To Appear In Downton Abbey (E.)

BY MARK WORGAN ON MARCH 6, 2012

US actor beginning to sound desperate...

Downton Abbey has its fair share of fans in Hollywood, and just as the rest of us would love to star in our favourite film or TV series, the glitteratti are begging to be featured on the ITV show.

The latest is former Cheers and current CSI star Ted Danson who explained that he loves watching the period drama with actress wife Mary Steenburgen, and would be delighted to act in the period drama.

He told the Radio Times: "We're watching the second year in [the US] and my wife and I are completely hooked," adding "I can't wait for Crawley to get out of his wheelchair and fall in love with Mary."


Read more:  http://www.entertainmentwise.com/news/71070/Hollywood-Star-Pleads-To-Star-In-Downton-Abbey