Matthew Macfadyen: Mac the knife

EXPRESS
By: Simon Button
Published: Sun, November 10, 2

Ripper Street is definitely not suitable for children. All those gory Victorian murders are the stuff of nightmares, so it’s just as well for actor Matthew Macfadyen that eight-year-old Maggie and seven-year-old Ralph are distinctly unimpressed by their father’s career. Have they seen any of his stuff? “Er, now and again,” says the 6ft 3in actor, “but they’re not really interested. I wish they were sometimes, but they’re not. The most boring thing they could watch is Daddy. They’d rather see Despicable Me 2.”

Macfadyen, married for nine years to his Spooks co-star Keeley Hawes, happily pulled on the three-piece suit and bowler hat of Detective Inspector Edmund Reid for the return of BBC1’s Monday night murder thriller. But he has no illusions that he could do the job for real.“Every role you play, you sort of imaginatively jump into it, so you think, ‘Yeah, I could be a soldier,’ or whatever. You’ve got to believe in it and take it seriously, at least a little bit. But that’s the joy of this job. You can dip a toe into another world – and often you meet the people who do that job for a living, so you get some amazing insights – and then you can dip out again, safely and happily. But be a real policeman? Of course I couldn’t. I’d be hopeless. I’m just not clever enough.”

Instead, the Norfolk-born son of an actress and an oil executive has been honing his stagecraft since he enrolled at RADA at 17. Now 38, he has compiled an impressive CV that includes a number of Shakespeare roles and Noel Coward’s Private Lives on stage – when he co-starred with Kim Cattrall – plus Pride & Prejudice and Anna Karenina on film, and everything from Spooks to Pillars of the Earth via Ashes to Ashes and Little Dorrit on telly. It’s the success of Ripper Street that has really raised his profile, however. “I don’t get stopped in the street very often but it does happen a little more now,” he says. “Since this show started, people stop me and say they love it and I’m so glad they do. It’s a lovely feeling to get good feedback.”



Not everyone, it has to be said, has been able to stomach all that gore. “But you shouldn’t sugar-coat it,” argues Macfadyen.  “There are boundaries of taste, I suppose, but a bit of blood and guts is all right.”Ripper Street series two finds Edmund Reid in “a pretty dark place,” says the actor. Sergeant Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn) is still by his side, “but Reid is no longer living at home, he’s living in his office and he’s pretty lonely. Jerome’s character is married and he’s happy. He’s enjoying domestic bliss with his new wife, which is a bit of a turnaround from the first series. But Reid’s wife isn’t around any more and we don’t know why – well, not yet anyway. So he throws himself into his work.”

READ MORE HERE: http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/tv-radio/441869/Mac-the-knife


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Review of Ripper Street ‘What Use Our Work?’ By Neela Debnath Arts (THE INDEPENDENT)

SPOILERS: Do not read this if you have not seen episode 8 of ‘Ripper Street’

As the curtain fell on our heroes of the East End, these past two months have offered an interesting insight into this faux, hyper-real Victoriana version of Whitechapel, complete with its cockney geezers and top hats.

This week saw the resolution of Jackson’s storyline whereby he cleared his name using forensics to rightly prove that Goodnight framed him as the Ripper. There was also a subplot involving date rape and human trafficking, with Rose getting caught up in something that required Drake to rescue her yet again. On top of that the audience learnt the whole story of the night Reid lost his daughter Matilda.

The three simultaneous stories which were interwoven into the episode created a thrilling finale. It was a race against the clock to save Rose and also the girl thought to be Matilda but who turned out to be a street urchin.

It was a fantastic red herring thrown in there in amongst all the other things that were going on. There was the hope that finally Reid might find some peace and closure instead this dark shadow will always be there in his life. The sense of guilt will hang over him, the same guilt which caused a rift in marriage and led him to stray from his wife. As a rule all detectives need to remain workaholics, driven deeper into their work by the guilt of a dark and hunting past, Reid is no different in this respect. It would just be plain wrong if we saw him strolling jauntily through the streets of the East End, whistling a tune. If police officers are to be brilliant then they must remain troubled and either be alcoholics or philanderers or both.

What Use Our Work? was a strong finale to the series and by the last scene it felt like the trio were ready for more. Hobbs was not forgotten either which was a really nice touch and really honoured the character. The scene where Artherton, the officer with the great big bushy ginger beard who usually communicates only through his eyes, belted out a tune in the pub to mark the passing of the young officer was wonderfully poignant. All in all, it worked with a usual mixture of action, intrigue and drama, along with nasty little violent or visceral moments that pepper the series.

Ripper Street is a great Sunday night cop show, it’s engaging with three really interesting leads. Yes, there are a multitude of anachronisms but it is still good fun and essentially a police procedural in the Victorian age, i.e. CSI: Whitechapel. It is also worth mentioning that it has been beautifully shot. It may not have the same sweeping sets of other production but it manages to look like the east end of London, even if it is filmed in Ireland, most notably in Kilmainham Gaol with its Panopticon building and a car park outside Dublin Castle.


READ MORE: http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2013/02/24/review-of-ripper-street-what-use-our-work/