Recap, Ripper Street, Series, Victorian Period

Ripper Street: Speak for the Dead

Previously on Ripper Street: The gang got back together, very uneasily, and investigated the death of a woman and disappearance of a girl who turned out to be Reid’s supposedly dead daughter. She’s with Susan, but Reid was told she was dead, and he killed the man who had her before going on the run.

Lights up on a stage, where an extravagantly dressed clairvoyant named Alexander Le Cheyne starts his show.

Meanwhile, Drake goes into Reid’s now-empty office and looks sad.

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EditorBeeJanuary 17, 2015Leave a comment

Recap, Ripper Street, Series, Victorian Period

Ripper Street: The Girl in the Cellar

Previously on Ripper Street: A train crash brought Jackson, Reid, and Drake back together after four years apart. They found some of the men involved, but not the ringleader, who is, as it turns out, Susan’s lawyer, who had the train robbery committed at her instigation.

A man sifts through the mud along the river, finding some junk, which he takes to some little workshop nearby. He’s got a butterfly in a jar there, which he takes home with him. At home, his wife reports that there have been no customers that day. She quietly tells him (it appears he may be a bit slow) that they have nothing left.

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EditorBeeDecember 10, 2014December 9, 20142 Comments

Recap, Ripper Street, Series, Victorian Period

Ripper Street: Whitechapel Terminus

Previously on Ripper Street: Drake lost his way after the death of his wife, despite Rose’s attempts to drag him back to the land of the living. Reid started to turn into the worst possible version of himself, Jackson screwed things up so badly with Susan it looks like curtains for them for good, and Susan got her hands on a bad man’s considerable financial holdings.

Man, I am SO stoked to have this show back. Three cheers for fan outrage!

A man limps into a dingy warehouse, joining some thugs who are already there. He introduces himself as ‘railways’. They are ‘guns’. That makes things simpler. Gun 1 tells Railways to tell them what he knows and he shows them a railway map and tells them he’s figured out how to make the train they want to steal go exactly where they want it to. There’s also a little talk about the fact that none of them have met the man who’s actually hiring them for this job.

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EditorBeeDecember 4, 2014December 4, 20143 Comments

Recap, Ripper Street, Series, Victorian Period

Ripper Street: Our Betrayal

Previously on Ripper Street: Jesus, where to begin? Jackson’s no-account brother, Daniel, showed up with a stolen, uncut diamond that Jackson hopes to use to buy his way back into Susan’s affections. She, meanwhile, has finally given in to Duggan’s gross demands and is stuck with the man living in her house. Reid and Cobden consummate their relationship, with Best ickily listening in, because apparently he has nothing better to do than to stalk Reid. Jedediah Shine showed back up to play puppetmaster with Flight, his conflicted little spy, and to strangle a jeweler whom Reid knows personally. Drake, in a spiral of misery after Bella’s death, is self-punishing in a big way, but he returns to Leman Street when he accidentally discovers said jeweler’s body in a pauper’s grave. All that happened in just one episode. We can’t say this show’s not going out with a bang.

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EditorBeeDecember 18, 20133 Comments

Recap, Ripper Street, Series, Victorian Period

Ripper Street: The Prodigal Returns

Previously on Ripper Street: Susan’s landlord started putting the squeeze on her, in the hope of forcing her to sleep with him; Drake’s wife Bella randomly turned out to be a former member of a suicide cult, and she duly did what the cult was meant to do, sending Drake into a hellish spiral of depression.

We begin far from London’s East End, at a diamond mine in Cape Colony, South Africa. Black workers toil while white overseers stand around. One of the overseers, played by David Costabile (fun fact! He recently got married at the place where my mom works! I’m pretty sure she made his wedding cake.) sees something on the ground—presumably an uncut diamond. There’s a brief distraction while one of the overseers breaks a man’s hand for allegedly stealing, and while everyone’s looking the other way, David shoves the rock into his mouth and, with difficulty, swallows it. Later, he locks himself in the privy and, with even more difficulty, recovers it.

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EditorBeeDecember 11, 20133 Comments

Recap, Ripper Street, Series, Victorian Period

Ripper Street: Father Knows Best

Previously on Ripper Street: Susan told Jackson to get lost, after he gambled and lost most of her money on a land deal in the Argentine, and Drake found marital bliss with one of Susan’s former girls.

Drake’s at a flower stall, buying a bouquet for his wife. The girl selling the flowers tells him the meanings of each of them, and he’s doing pretty well, until he selects yellow tulips, which apparently mean love without hope. He starts to head home, but then spots Rose sitting on the street, looking a little lost, and asks her what happened.

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EditorBeeDecember 4, 2013December 4, 20131 Comment

Recap, Ripper Street, Series, Victorian Period

Ripper Street: Power to the People

Previously on Ripper Street: Reid met an interesting lady politician and Susan got kidnapped by a complete nutter.

Flyte goes to confession and admits to being a liar. Also, he suddenly seems to have a rather Irish-sounding accent now.

A prisoner is taken in a prison cart through a very Irish-heavy area of London, singing a patriotic Irish song. Why the hell would they transport this guy through this neighbourhood? Surely there was another route the driver could take? And if you’re going to take this guy this way, why not bring some backup along? It’s just the driver, who looks nervous. This is just asking for trouble. Oh, and sure enough, the driver drops off the cart, dead. The prisoner calls for the gathering crowd to free him, and some kid is paid by someone to grab the keys off the driver’s belt and hand them to the prisoner, who escapes from the cart, looks down at the dead driver, and declares that a dead Englishman is a good start. He grabs some clothes from a nearby laundry basket and goes into a back alley to change. While he’s there, someone (presumably the same person who paid off the kid) shows up and offers him more clothes. He greets the man happily.

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EditorBeeNovember 21, 20131 Comment

Recap, Series, Victorian Period

Ripper Street: Women’s Lib

Previously on Ripper Street: Susan was getting shaken down by her skeevy landlord, which created a rift between herself and Jackson.

We open on…Rose? Wow, I didn’t expect to see her again. She’s working in a music hall now, just like she always wanted, but unfortunately she’s not performing, she’s waitressing. And maybe it’s for the best, because the show’s a pretty tactless song and dance about the Ripper. Nice. Two gentlemen in the audience are plainly disgusted, and even more so when Rose comes over with drinks. One of them calls the place a den of iniquity and promises to have it closed by the end of the week. And yet, he does not get up and leave, as one would expect. Rose rolls her eyes and moves on to another table, where Jackson and Susan are having a crappy date night. After a little small talk, she moves on, and Jackson and Susan get tense again. He complains, and she reminds him they’re there to support Rose. A dark-haired woman comes in, eyes some of the guests, and catches Susan’s eye. She turns away with a smirk. During the performance, the lights go out briefly, and when they come back on, the snooty jerk is gone, and his friend has a bloodstain on the front of his shirt and is mighty confused. He raises the alarm. How convenient that Jackson’s already there! Snooty Jerk, meanwhile, is being bundled out the back of the theatre.

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EditorBeeNovember 15, 2013Leave a comment

Recap, Series, Victorian Period

Ripper Street: Freak Show

Previously on Ripper Street: Reid crossed paths with Dr Treves, best known to history as the man who rescued The Elephant Man, and Shine, a dangerous sociopath working in K division. Susan’s getting shaken down by her skeevy landlord, and Jackson’s considering a move abroad.

We start with a closeup of something difficult to identify but is probably something gross, before we switch to a woman in labour, staggering along the streets. She makes it to a hospital, where she begs the nurses for help. She’s brought to an operating room and Treves is sent for. He calls for chloroform and gets ready to perform a C section. Could they do those safely in 1890? Guess in this universe they can, because when next she wakes, it’s to the sound of her baby crying.

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EditorBeeNovember 8, 20131 Comment

Recap, Series, Victorian Period

Ripper Street: H and K

Again, WTF, BBC? First I had no idea The Paradise had come slinking back, and now Ripper Street made a fairly unlauded return? Only months after the first series aired? Don’t get me wrong, I’m delighted to see it back, but now I’m wondering what’s going to make my long, dark winter nights more enjoyable come January. Unless that’s when they’re planning on running series 3 (if there is a series 3).

We open on a man who’s about 90% teeth—and a copper with K division, apparently—pounding on a door with one of those slidey eye-hatches and demanding to know where ‘she’ is. The man who appears at the hatch—a Chinaman, and yes, that is important—says she’s not there and slams the peephole shut.

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EditorBeeNovember 1, 2013Leave a comment

The Armchair Anglophile

Highly opinionated history, recaps, and reviews

Tag: Matthew MacFadyen

Ripper Street: Speak for the Dead

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Ripper Street: The Girl in the Cellar

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Ripper Street: Whitechapel Terminus

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Ripper Street: Our Betrayal

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Ripper Street: The Prodigal Returns

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Ripper Street: Father Knows Best

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Ripper Street: Power to the People

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