SUMMER BOXSETS: Sacred Games

This week we go to India for our Summer Boxsets review, and the Mumbai-set adaptation of Vikram Chandra’s sprawling crime novel.

Review: Ripper Street (S5 E6/6), Monday 24th July, BBC2

So Ripper Street comes to a final conclusion, after five series of mystery, suspense, gore, thrills, brilliant performances, sparkling dialogue and riveting detail. Can all the loose ends be tied up, accounts settled and character arcs be resolved?  

Review: Ripper Street (S5 E5/6), Monday 17th July, BBC2

At last, the pace picks up this week, as Dove’s empire begins to crumble around him, and a turn of fortune brings a glimmer of hope to the beleaguered Reid. After what frankly have been four lethargic episodes, with no real plot development beyond what was strictly inevitable, the action takes off this week, as several characters face up to now unavoidable moral dilemmas.

Review: Ripper Street (S5 E4/6), Monday 10th July, BBC2

After last week’s bucolic interlude in the rural idyl of Hackney Marshes, surely this week’s episode must get back into the cut-and-thrust of life and death in Whitechapel? Wasting the potential of an escape to a normal life with fishmonger’s daughter Prudence, and reverting to his savage nature, the Whitechapel Golem, Nathaniel, has killed again. Will this mark Reid’s final chance to capture him?

Review: Ripper Street (S5 E3/6), Monday 3rd July, BBC2

Exiled to Hackney Marshes with nothing but eels and solitaire for company, the Whitechapel Golem, Nathaniel Dove, is slowly going stir-crazy – and his brother Augustus seems unable to pin down their nemesis Edmund Reid, which would allow him to end the isolation.

Review: Ripper Street (S5 E2/6), Monday 26th June,

There’s a touch of the Burke and Hare about this episode, as Reid and Jackson, still on the run from Dove and Shine, find need for a corpse fresh from the mortuary.

Review: Ripper Street (S5 E1/6), Monday 19th June, BBC2

It’s been far too long (for BBC viewers anyway) since Ripper Street was last on air, but some of us are still quivering with anticipation of this final season. With Drake (Jerome Flynn) apparently dead, and Reid, (Matthew Macfadyen), Jackson, (Adam Rothenberg) and Susan (MyAnna Buring) on the run from the corrupt Dove (Killian Scott), is this a case of the hunters becoming the hunted?

BBC confirms transmission date for series five of Ripper Street

I do enjoy Ripper Street. Yes, it’s a bit stodgy and po-faced at times, but those clothes… that setting! We’ve known for a while that the move to Amazon from a BBC-exclusive show meant that creator Richard Warlow could finish his intended five-series story arc. Even though the fifth and last series has come and gone on Amazon, the BBC has announced the transmission date for the series… and it’s not too far away.

Review: Ripper Street (S4 E7/7), Monday 3rd October, BBC2

(C) Tiger Aspect 2016 – Photographer: Bernard Walsh

So what is the secret of the Whitechapel Golem? If this was EA Poe, it could be a gorilla with a straight razor; if it were Dr Who, it could be a giant rat from the sewers; but this is Ripper Street, so it’s likely to be something at once more monstrous and more human. We know there are two threads bound to be tied up this week; the mystery killer in whose place Bloom was executed, and Susan’s plot to rob the Customs House, retrieve her child and flee the country. Against this background, Drake and Reid, once friends and colleagues, are bound to clash.

NB: Spoilers

Review: Ripper Street (S4 E6/7), Monday 25th September, BBC1

(C) Tiger Aspect 2016 – Photographer: Bernard Walsh

There’s a ghost in the house, and it’s Long Susan – officially she’s dead, but when Rose sees her hanging around her child Connor, even Drake thinks she’s imagining it. Mathilda’s on hand to watch Connor, but who’s watching her? There’s some sort of wolf-creature on the loose in Whitechapel, and it’s already killed once, slaying Drake’s protege Thomas Gower – and maybe the rabbi Ratowski as well?

NB: Spoilers abound