Stab, Slice, Hack...

As I mentioned recently, I watched Ripper Street, a BBC police procedural set in Whitechapel, London after the killings of Jack the Ripper. The Ripper has vanished (since the police were never really close to catching him anyway), and the cops of the Whitechapel district are simply trying to get back to the average copper business. The fear that Jack will come back at some point is a major theme of the show (it is called Ripper Street, after all) and many nods are made through the first season to Jack and the brutality of the slayings (copycat killers and other evil criminals inspired by the brutality of the murders being another major element of the show).

And yet, as much as the show wants to be about Jack the Ripper, the writers just don't have much they can so with that "character". Since they've (so far) wisely decided to avoid a concrete theory as to who Jack was (since there's never going to be a way to prove it now), the Ripper doesn't ever show up in the series. Without the Big Bad to lean on, the series ends up feeling more like C.S.I.: 1890s than Hannibal.

Now, don't get me wrong -- there's plenty to like in a good police procedural. I';m actually quite a fan of Law and Order: U.K., and I have spent a fair amount of time watching various cop and medical shows (almost all of which amount to "find evidence, test theory, find more evidence, test more theories, find criminal five minutes before the end of the episode"). There's fun to be had from the procedure, and at least Ripper Street sets up a different location (and time period) from more contemporary-set shows, and Ripper Street is an interesting show to watch. The production values are high, the writing is pretty good, and the characters are generally likeable.

Aside from the lack of a big bad (which we'll touch on in more detail in a moment) the big issue I have with the show is that it has a hard time staying focused on its own time period. There are winking references to the future dropped somewhat regularly (one character, lamenting the night he has to spend looking through reams of paperwork is told "one day there might be machines that will handle all of this paperwork for you...").

The biggest anachronism, though, is the doctor (and friend of the lead detective), Captain Homer Jackson. The good captain was a U.S. Pinkerton before coming to London for reasons he doesn't like to get into. He's also, apparently, a scientist and forensic pathologist (forensics is named dropped a couple of times). A cursory look at the history of forensics science shows that the term wasn't even widely used until the twentieth century, and before that, most of the work Doctor Jackson would have done would never have been attributed to that field.

Of course, the fact that Jackson seems to know just about everything of ever scientific field and ends up being the "character of plot convenience" certainly doesn't help.

But, as I said before, the biggest issue I have with the show is that there's no new Ripper for the series to focus on (at least in the first season -- Netflix has yet to get second season, so I'll have to wait before I can see the new adventures of Whitechapel without Jack). For a show like this to sing you need a villain to focus on. A show like this -- with it's serialized character stories and an evolving police force -- needs a good villain to galvanize everything. You need a murderer to taunt the police, and right now Ripper Street lacks that.

What this show could use is someone like Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal (currently appearing on the creatively titled Hannibal) is a smart, savvy killer who's always at least four steps ahead of everyone around him (even in the movies, where Hannibal is locked up in a mental institution, you can sense the gear spinning in his head as he thinks through the next tens years of his life and all the way he's going to escape the place given half a chance). Hannibal succeeds because it has a villain pulling the strings behind the scenes. Hannibal is every bit as much a procedural as Ripper Street, with case-of-the-week plotting and over-the-top murder scenes for everyone in the audience to go "ewwww" at.

Without the character of Hannibal Lecter, the series wouldn't work (and not just because it's called Hannibal). Lecter brings the characters together (even while he works to figuratively and literally tear them apart). He makes a fairly okay procedural totally watchable. There's someone to root against while at the same time watching every move just to see if (or when) it'll all come crashing down around them (a similar reason why I like the Netflix series House of Cards).

Ripper Street is totally worth watching. It's well put together and presents a decent case-of-the-week formula with just enough 1890s flourishes to make it interesting. If only they had Jack the Ripper (or Hannibal Lecter) to lean on. Then the series would sing.