Sunday Corner with Lee Liberman -- RIPPER STREET: British late-Victorian police procedural

Whitechapel is life in all its wild and rotten splendor; 

beside it, the rest of the world seems a tomb. 

The streaming series RIPPER STREET might have escaped me were it not for an accidental meet up with an enthusiastic review, followed by a binge-watch and absorption from the first moment. Set near the time that the ghoulish Jack the Ripper serial-murdered his prostitute victims, the 5–season police drama is particularly energetic, suspenseful, and literate, thanks to prolific writer-creator, Richard Warlow (below).

Real life persons (events, and the Dublin shooting locale) lend historicity, for example Edmund Reid and Fred Abberline, the former played by series lead, Matthew MacFadyen (Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina), and the latter by Clive Russell (Game of Thrones, Outlander); Abberline was Reid’s superior (below).

Reid headed criminal investigation at H Division in Whitechapel where Ripper did his crimes. Although you’d expect so, the series does not directly address the murders. They add dolorous atmosphere, a guilty prod to the police for work unfinished, in that Ripper was never caught. (Episode 1.1, a copy-cat murder, is as close as Div H police get.) In the main, Ripper Street is a deep dive into the late 19th century world of London’s East End and the battles by its protagonists to solve crimes, keep the peace, and have some semblance of private life and love. 

Reid’s particular sidekick is his forensic pathologist, an American with a shady past, Homer Jackson, played by Adam Rothenberg (above, second l). Jackson is a “two-penny sawbones, a snake-oil-pushing clap doctor” whose outside-the-box genius for uncovering crimes in the bones and tissues of victims is invaluable to Reid. Homer has a wife from whom he is estranged, Long Susan (far l) a criminally inclined, heart-of-gold brothel madam played by MyAnna Buring (Twilight Saga, Downton Abbey).

Fellow officer(ctr. r) is Inspector Bennet Drake, the craggy Jerome Flynn (GoT's Bronn) and one more main player, Rose, the prostitute who seeks to better herself, is played by Charlene McKenna (far r). Drake’s gnarly charisma is a helpful offset to MacFadyen’s buttoned-up Inspector Reid — the center spoke around which action turns, “attached to Whitechapel as if by lead weights on a river bed”.

The Dickensian world of Whitechapel comes to life with assorted guest players such as the winsome (Ms) Charlie Murphy (above, l, of Rebellion, The Last Kingdom), and the very appealing Damien Molony (above, r) in an episode that stews together romance, Irish politics, and a battle for adoption of either alternating or direct-current electricity.

Joseph Mawle (shown above, of The Hallow and Clapham Junction) has a recurring role as the evil-doer Inspector Shine, revealing his unshowy acting chops (above). Iain Glen (GoT, Downton Abbey); Jonas Armstrong (Robin Hood); the talented David Dawson (Alfred the Great in The Last Kingdom) as newspaper hound and dandy Fred Best (below); Lydia Wilson, John Heffernan, Josh O’Connor, Amanda Hale, and more familiar faces appear from BBC, PBS and other networks' series.

Whitechapel itself is an affecting character. St Mary’s, a small local chapel dating from the 1300’s, lent its name to the area which became a slum in Victorian times as Irish, Jewish, Indian, and other foreigners crowded in to this and other East End neighborhoods. ‘Elephant man’ Joseph Merrick (below) lived and died in Whitechapel, often on exhibit as a curiosity (one story is his).

By the 1880’s there were reportedly 60 brothels and 1200 prostitutes. Noxious businesses located there, the sounds and smells of tanners, brewers, and metal shops comfortably distant from the affluence of central London. The Whitechapel Bell Foundry headquarters (below), dating from the era of Elizabeth I, cast Westminster Abbey bells, Big Ben, and the Liberty Bell of Philadelphia.

The East End has been in our sights over and again. In the 1590s Shoreditch, East End, Shakespeare plied his trade at the Curtain Theater (Shakespeare in Love).The late 1990’s series Bramwell featured a woman doctor operating on this turf and telling stories of East End poor; Call the Midwife (1950’s-60’s)is a more recent take, and Tom Hardy’s recent Taboo features East End locations. However, Warlow’s Ripper Street is likely the most consistent, visceral, and frenetic portrait of this small piece of real estate. Division H policed a bit over a mile and 67,000 poor, including factories, tenements, brothels, and pubs. Their stories addressed labor conflict like the Match Girls strike and discrimination against Jewish, Chinese, and Indian minorities.

The ever-present thread of women seeking to control their own lives and bodies is revealed in Long Susan’s career, for which she pays and pays more. New technology arrives — the telephone and micro-reader, blood typing, finger printing, and the invention of film become lynchpins for murder.

Rose, the prostitute, is manipulated into being photographed by a pornographer who strangles his subjects in front of the camera; we are introduced to the amazing invention of moving images, sure to become cash cows for future pornographers. A gang of child criminals is led by an adult man who directs the boys to capture girls for sale to groups of men; Reid traces the source of the Plague to a “Molly House” (gay/transgender brothel); a train robbery results in the deaths of 55 people; Long Susan finances a hospital and is convinced to treat victims of back-alley abortions when an affiliated male doctor is discovered using poor women for experimentation and sterilization; the stockholders of a shipping company are dismayed to find that a woman is the inventor of a new engine that could save the company; a work house administrator is found to have murdered sickly children in his care.

Four seasons serve up a steady diet of these social-justice-themed police procedurals, each complex and tightly wound, but season five resolves the relationships of the main characters while bringing to justice a poor fellow who having seen his mother eaten by wolves, bites his victims to death: “homo homini lupus est — man is wolf to man” (that's Jonas Armstong, above, as Nathaniel).

Curiosity if not hope, is satisfied because these tales of Whitechapel do not end with a warm glow like episodes of Call the Midwife. Rather, life and loss go on: “We are doomed to the ragged purgatory of these streets...Lady Justice holds us...to her righteous tit.” (Inspector Shine). And, as creator Warlow writes, there are diamonds to be mined from pain.

Ripper Street streams now via Netflix.

The above post was written by our 

monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman

Juan Carlos Medina's THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM proves a nifty, stylish, smart Victorian thriller

What a surprising but clever choice it was to put Spanish director Juan Carlos Medina at the helm of the new British mystery thriller, THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM. The film's producers most certainly caught Medina's first movie, a bizarre combination of mystery, history and other-worldliness entitled Painless, which TrustMovies was most impressed by some years back at the late-and-much-lamented FSLC series, Spanish Cinema Now. The filmmaker's second feature turns out to be every bit as good as his first, thanks not only to him (Señor Medina is shown below) but to the film's screenwriter, Jane Goldman (who adapted her screenplay from the Peter Ackroyd novel (Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem), and to the surprising and especially well-chosen cast.

The other thing that makes this movie so special is its splendid visual panache/production design (courtesy of Simon Dennis (cinematography), Pilar Foy (set decor), Grant Montgomery (production design). The film is set in Victorian London, with much of the goings-on taking place in a popular British Music Hall, so between the dark foreboding of the back streets (currently plagued by a killer penned by the press as the Limehouse Golem: one of its victims is Jewish), the busy interiors of the homes on display, and the garish but hugely entertaining music hall scenes, there is hardly a moment in which you'll be able to take your eyes off the screen.

And then there is that remarkable cast, led by the unmissable Bill Nighy (above), here in a role the likes of which we've seldom seen him: as a Scotland Yard inspector who has been given this nasty case to get it out of the hair of his up-and-coming superior, and also, it is hinted, due to his character's improper sexual proclivity. Nighy is, as ever, tactful, unshowy and absolutely on-the-mark. He makes the character's search for justice our own, helping to anchor the movie.

As the owner of the troupe, as well as its leading (often cross-dressing) man at the Music Hall, the heretofore pretty-boy Douglas Booth (above and below, right) treads new ground. This actor may very well be capable of a lot more that he's been given the opportunity to show us, if his grand performance -- over-the-top (as it should be) when he's on stage, charming and bright when he's not -- is any indication. He begins this vastly entertaining movie with a bang, and helps carry it through to its surprising conclusion.

The third amazing actor here is a young woman -- Olivia Cooke (above, left, and below) -- whom many of us will know best from her performance as the sweet and caring girl with a tube up her nose in the cable TV series Bates Motel. Ms Cooke is a revelation here, as the wife of a not-so-nice would-be playwright husband, who has just died as our film begins.

We soon learn of her character's younger days, and watch in wonder and delight as this young girl becomes a talented and popular music hall star, and then finally see her go on trial for murder, as she becomes the Nighy character's obsession, and simultaneously takes the idea of Victorian feminism into quite new and different territory.

The Limehouse Golem is mainly a murder mystery, with the identity of the golem the piece of the puzzle for which Nighy and we keep searching. We see various characters try to fit into the role of murderer, but no one quite manages it, though the various attempts give the director the chance to show his chops in the suspense/blood/gore departments. (The movie could easily be much gorier than it is, and Medina's to be commended for his distancing techniques, in which atmosphere most often trumps slasher effects.)

In a fine supporting cast that includes Spain's Maria Valverde (as the near-constant "other woman") and Australia's Sam Reid (as Cooke's no-account hubby), a stand-out would have to be Daniel Mays (above) as the slightly slow but kindly cop who acts as Nighy's assistant. And, yes, that's the versatile Eddie Marsan, below, who appears as the Music Hall's troupe's manager.

A rich stew of period detail, acting chops, atmosphere, tall story and thoughtful provocation, the movie almost resists classification. It's just plain eye-popping. And Ms Cooke is simply sensational. "Here we are again!" has seldom resonated with such a combination of joy, horror and irony as in the film's strange, powerful and moving finale.

From RLJ Entertainment & Hanway Films and running 109 minutes, the movie opens this Friday, September 8, in limited theatrical release and simultaneously on VOD and digital HD. This is the sort of film that really ought to be seen on the big screen, so if you live in or near these ten cities across the USA, try to catch the film there: in New York at the Village East Cinema, in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Music Hall, in Cleveland at the AMC Solon 16, in  Dallas at the AMC Hickory Creek 16, in Houston at the AMC Yorktown 15, in Miami at the AMC Pompano Beach 18, in Minneapolis at the AMC Apple Valley 15, in Phoenix at the AMC Arizona Center 24, in Tampa at the AMC Sundial 19, and in Chicago at the AMC Woodridge 18.