A thrilling return for the crime drama that won’t die
I’m currently dog-sitting a friend’s Staffordshire Bull Terrier – a gentle old girl, far more likely to lick you than bite – and had to cover her big brown eyes and velveteen ears during the return of (BBC Two). This visceral episode of the Victorian crime thriller had a dogfighting theme, with snarling, slavering Staffies set on men and each other. At least two dogs died on-screen and more were maimed. Rarely have I been so relieved to see the disclaimer “No animals were harmed in the making of this programme” on the closing credits.
This fifth and final series resumed where the previous one left off. Detective Inspector Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn) had been murdered by a cannibalistic serial killer in the sewers beneath Whitechapel. Drake’s old friends DI Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen), seedy surgeon Captain Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg) and brothel madam Long Susan (Myanna Buring) buried their differences and teamed up to bring his killer to justice.
There were two small snags: the trio were on the run because they’re wanted for the murder of Long Susan’s abusive father, while crooked assistant commissioner Augustus Dove (Killian Scott) was hot on their trail – hell-bent on covering up the inconvenient fact that the subterranean serial killer was his own long-lost brother, semi-feral man-child Nathaniel (Jonas Armstrong).
Dove hired dastardly Inspector Jedediah Shine (Joseph Mawle) to take charge of Leman Street police station and lead the hunt for his old foe Reid. Dove even legally adopted Jackson and Long Susan’s son in an attempt to lure them out of hiding.
As Reid put it, in typically baroque terms: “Truth and justice are made Augustus Dove’s whores. We must get our justice or the heavens fall.”
Ripper Street is the drama that wouldn’t die. Even when the BBC tried to kill it off in 2013, streaming service Amazon Prime stepped in with a wad of cash. Thank goodness they did. It’s gathering to a crescendo beautifully, all slow-burning emotion and fogshrouded foreboding.
With its penchant for facial hair, sailor tattoos and steampunk styling, Ripper Street’s 1897 setting also bears some uncanny similarities to the achingly fashionable East London of today. After this six-part run, perhaps it could be rebooted as Hipster Street.
Forget sci-fi fantasies about flying cars, space colonies, one-pill meals and robot butlers. Horizon: 10 Things You Need to Know About the Future (BBC Two) found mathematician Hannah Fry deploying current data to provide a more evidence-based vision of tomorrow.
Aided by a think-tank of experts – including a surprise cameo from former prime minister Tony Blair – flame-haired Dr Fry investigated the questions the British public wanted answered about the future.
Could we become immortal? No, 110 years of age is about our limit, unless we crack the secrets of the naked mole rat’s longevity. Will there be a cure for cancer? The “living drug” of gene therapy is our best hope. Will our jobs be taken by robots? Some of them will, I’m afraid, so yes. Is the planet on the verge of another mass extinction? Quite probably. Will Arsène Wenger remain Arsenal manager forever? OK, maybe not the last one.
Visually, this mostly relied on graphs, interviews with boffins and walking-and-talking reporters. Cramming 10 hefty questions into an hour didn’t allow for much detail and felt a little like a glorified list show. However, this highly digestible format did provide some interesting perspectives on clean energy, climate change and health, both physical and mental. There was even time for a tongue-in-cheek investigation into the prospect of flying cars. We might finally get them after all. The main issue seemed to be stopping them from crashing into each other.
In a world where the present seems so uncertain, this jaunty documentary provided some much-needed optimism about the future. It might even have been enough to cheer up an Arsenal fan.