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I’ve wandered from my old habit of primarily watching Netflix shows as they are removed from the streaming service. Part of it is a shift in my time commitments. Part of it was a break to focus on two series. The first being Dexter, which while it was removed from Netflix’s streaming, it has been added to Amazon Prime‘s. I was able to pick up where I left off. The other is the Netflix original content The Punisher, a show that challenges the meaning of the phrase guilty pleasure. I do like that opening credit sequence. I must admit to that.

Nonetheless, when I saw that the BBC TV series Ripper Street was on its way out, I figured it was time to return to my old routine.

The premise is an excellent one. It is set toward the end of the Victorian era, which also happens to be the beginning of a revolution in criminal investigation, both in fact and in the minds of the public through fiction – see the popularity of Sherlock Holmes and his evidence-based deductive reasoning. The end of the first Ripper killing streak begins the show, picking up with the relatively mundane investigations of London crime that followed the enthralling chase for Jack the Ripper. Maybe it would be more obvious to English viewers, but the key characters of the Ripper investigation are the genuine historical figures (detective Edmund Reid is Ripper Street‘s main character while detective Frederick Abberline and vigilante George Lusk also feature prominently from the first episode).

Yet, the show stretches its period setting into the modern. In the opening episode, we find our team using a rather unorthodox autopsy to discover that the murder, staged to look like a Jack the Ripper killing, was actually the result of a pornographic* snuff film. Clues involve not only chemicals unique to the motion picture business but pollution from the nascent tube system. Later episodes even feature improbable references to the current-day genre while remaining mostly (mostly) anchored in the time in which the show takes place.

It’s a fine line to walk. Do you attempt to challenge the technology-heavy competition such as CSI and NCIS by modernizing the story? Or do you try to keep it (mostly) a period piece? Ripper Street seems to have chosen its path and sticks to it, at least as far as I’ve watched to date. Is it the right path? Is there THE right path? Even if Ripper Street isn’t making the optimal choices it is a solid piece of entertainment, well worth the time I can give to it before it goes away.

Photo by Yoss Traore on Pexels.com

*Timeline-wise, this would have made it not only ahead of its time in terms of illegal, hard-core pornography, but possibly the first pornographic film of any type.