Television series

Ripper Street

Name: Ripper Street
Genre: Drama, Crime, Mystery
Released: 2012
Cast: Matthew Macfadyen, Adam Rothenberg, MyAnna Buring, Jerome Flynn, Charlene McKenna

Crime
Very dark

Ripper Street follows a forensic-minded detective rebuilding Whitechapel's police force in the Ripper's shadow. It's a procedural with psychological depth, grounded in real Victorian crime science and social rot. Tense, atmospheric, endlessly inventive about how people break. For viewers who want their crime dramas smart and their misery earned.

TVMaze rating

4.0

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like slow-burning Victorian procedurals where the period texture, the flawed partnership of two detectives, and the moral grime of the East End matter as much as the crimes.

Skip it if you want a tightly plotted case-of-the-week thriller, since the show spends long stretches on its characters and the city rather than racing toward answers.

What it asks of you: Around sixty minutes an episode across five series, it asks for patience and a willingness to sit in lamplit, rain-soaked rooms without much comic relief.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Wire2002

A city as a character, systems failing the people inside them, and crime investigation that feels inevitable rather than dramatic. Same moral weight, same refusal to let you off easy.

But Five seasons is a commitment, and it moves slowly. Patience is not optional here.

MINDHUNTER2017

FBI profilers in the 1970s learning to think like killers. Methodical, unsettling, obsessed with the forensic and psychological architecture of violence, not spectacle.

But The second season drifts away from its core idea, and the show ended before finding its way back.

Dickensian2015

Victorian London populated by Dickens characters solving a murder. Same world-building ambition, same pleasure in period detail and unexpected connections between lives.

But It's lighter and stranger than Ripper Street—more playful mystery than gritty procedural. That tonal shift won't suit everyone.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Ripper Street

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

From Hell2001

Both refuse to treat the Ripper as entertainment, instead using him as a lens onto a society that disposed of human beings routinely and called it order.

A genuinely unsettling Ripper film that treats the murders as historical tragedy, not spectacle. It's concerned with class and power and systemic indifference—the same things that animate Ripper Street's morality.

But It's visually gothic to the point of melodrama, and Johnny Depp's performance can feel affected. Some of the historical conspiracy-mongering doesn't hold up.

Peaky Blinders2013

Post-war working-class crime in Birmingham, where violence and ambition tangle with history. Stylish and moral at once, with characters you believe would survive anything.

But It gets increasingly baroque and operatic as it goes on. Some viewers tire of that before the end.

Penny Dreadful2014

Victorian horror with Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, vampires, and the psychological damage underneath. Same atmosphere—gaslit, corrupted, beautiful in terrible ways.

But It's genuinely gruesome and sometimes gratuitously so. The horror can tip from unsettling to excessive.

Boardwalk Empire2010

1920s Atlantic City, organized crime, and the machinery of corruption. Ambitious scope, complex characters, that same sense of a society's architecture crumbling.

But Five seasons of build with an ending some found unsatisfying. It's a commitment that doesn't always pay off the way you'd hoped.

The Alienist2018

1890s New York, a serial killer, and a trio of outsiders inventing criminal psychology as they hunt. Darkly atmospheric and genuinely inventive about how minds can go wrong.

But It can feel overstuffed, and the violence toward women is graphic in ways that cross into exploitation at times.

Whitechapel2009

A modern police team investigating supposed Jack the Ripper copycat murders. Same obsession with the Ripper mythology and its hold on the public imagination.

But It's cheaper and cruder than Ripper Street, and the writing isn't in the same league. It's a serviceable procedural, nothing more.

The Knick2014

Both are about institutions trying to function at the frontier of knowledge, where the work is improvised and the stakes are lives, and where power runs invisibly through every decision.

A hospital in 1900 New York where medicine is barely science and everything is chaos. Directed by Soderbergh with kinetic visual intelligence. Same period obsession with systems breaking under the weight of human suffering.

But It's visually aggressive and stylistically demanding. If you want your drama understated, this will exhaust you. Also, the depiction of race is historically honest but difficult.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher2011

Both treat detection as a moral act that damages the detective. Both are interested in how certainty becomes poisoned when power and suspicion walk together.

A single case from 1860—a child's murder that scandalizes rural England. A meditation on suspicion, class, and how detective work corrupts everyone it touches. Slow-burn and humane.

But It's a one-off story with no momentum beyond its own logic. If you need plot velocity, you'll find it static and occasional. And it ends quietly.