Ripper tale tells women’s stories
The Ripper dropped unannounced on Netflix a few weeks ago and instantly shot into the top 10 of shows watched.
It isn’t hard to see why.
The whole ‘‘true crime documentary’’ genre is a minefield of the very good, mixed in with the tasteless, the exploitive and the crass.
Taking publicly available archive footage, popping off a couple of present-day interviews with whoever is still around (and, for no reason at all, Bono from U2), and then hiring some wash-up from a career no-one remembers who just happens to have the exact rasp in his voice that only 20 years of cigarettes and poor decisions can give you, to sling some adjectiveheavy narration over the top, is a quick road to pocketing a lazy fortune, and Netflix have been among the very worst at enabling this shoddy school of ‘‘film-making’’ for years.
But, done right, as with The Keepers, Unabomber in his Own Words or here, with The Ripper, then a show can be genuinely involving, informative and shocking, all without descending into exploitation and spectacle.
The key to the success of The Ripper – about the Yorkshire Ripper case that transfixed the United Kingdom from 1976 into the early 1980s, is that it gently but insistently focuses on the women’s stories.
While every news outlet in Britain and around the world was focused on the deeds of the man and diminishing his victims – leading to a general assumption by the public and police that the murderer was only targetting sex workers – this show looks at those dreadful years as being primarily the story of how women forced the media, and then the police, to quit the victimblaming ways of the past and to treat the victims as humans with a story to tell.
A final revelation that the killer could have been caught before he ever killed if one young woman’s story had been properly listened to and followed up, is as bleak as it is perfectly placed in the show.
Across four episodes, The Ripper takes long diversions into the reality of being a young woman working in the police, the media or in a lawyer’s office in the 1970s.
It’ll surprise no-one to learn that the
fear of women that drove Peter Sutcliffe, had its manifestations beneath the veneer of these institutions as well.
Or, for a TVNZ OnDemand life story you won’t be able to tear your eyes from, Rodman: For Better or Worse is a standalone ESPN documentary on the life and times of the indescribable Chicago Bulls immortal.
Anyone who sat through all 10 hours of Michael Jordan and The Last Dance (I know I did) knows that professional basketballer Dennis Rodman was by far the most interesting character in the whole show and missed him whenever he wasn’t on screen. So here, over a wellassembled 100 minutes, is the whole story, from homelessness and airport janitor to global superstar, one-time beau of Madonna, and bestie to Kim Jong Un. It’s all true and mostly incredible.