Ripper tonight, Motive tomorrow
It is drizzly and grey on a high-school football field in Vancouver when Motive begins. The stands are packed with cheering supporters, and the players are running their patterns on the field, blocking and tackling to waves of raucous applause. A high-school marching band waits its cue and the drummer — the de facto loser — is pressed up against the stands at the back, where he’s being showered with abuse from drunken louts in the crowd. The picture freezes and a caption appears: “The Killer.”
The scene then shifts to a nightclub, where a popular high-school teacher is belting out a karaoke rendition — badly — of Hit Me With Your Best Shot. The picture freezes again, and the caption appears: “The Victim.”
Seconds later, the teacher will be found dead in his apartment, surrounded by crime tape, the victim of a presumed home invasion gone wrong. Outside, an unmarked sedan pulls up in the flood of police lights and out steps Det. Angie Flynn, played by Kristin Lehman. She’s the primary on the case and she asserts her authority with a quiet confidence — confident, that is, until she sees the messy evidence firsthand.
The homegrown, set-inVancouver Motive debuts immediately following the Super Bowl on CTV, and will air in its regular time period, Sundays at 10, starting next week.(Sunday, CTV, 10 p.m.
Three weeks in and it can now be said without equivocation: Ripper Street is a ripping good yarn. BBC’s period drama, set in London’s Whitechapel district in the weeks and months following Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror, was picked up for a second season just days ago. The second season will air in 2014.
Here at home, Ripper Street has toiled in relative obscurity Saturday nights on Space, which is an odd place for it. It would be as if Murdoch Mysteries aired on the Syfy channel in the U.S. Ripper Street has about as much to do with science fiction as History TV’s Cajun Pawn Stars has to do with history.
A more logical pairing would have been with Copper, the made-in-Toronto period drama which airs on Showcase.
No matter. If you’re reading this, now you know where to find it.
And here’s what you’ve missed so far. Sensible, pragmatic Det. Insp. Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) runs East London’s H Division, a mismatched — and often overmatched — squad of detectives who serve and protect a neighbourhood overrun with crime, pestilence and poverty.
Reid’s partners in crimesolving include a seedy American sidekick (Adam Rothenberg), a former Pinkerton agent who’s moved across the pond, presumably to hide from something in his past.
Tonight’s episode revolves around a cholera outbreak and the panic caused when the disease spreads unchecked into neighbourhoods both rich and poor.
The attention to period detail — from the blood running in gutters to the dirt and grime on children’s faces — is exquisite, but it never overwhelms the story. Be warned, though: It’s not family viewing. (Space, 9 p.m.)