Matthew McFadden, a whore and a pimp
As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
This is a disappointing review of a British production for Americans apparently called Ripper Street, hence Jack the Ripper in London or Whitechapel in the late 1800's.
I had high hopes for this series in reviews online and looked forward to watching it as Matthew McFadden starred and he is very good, in his best work is The Way We Live Now. I will break this down in series for the 5 years without giving away the endings in the hopes of saving you from this blundering Downton Abbey type production which is basically Robert Conrad's Wild Wild West of a generation ago or Joss Whedon's Serenity based in outer space joined at the whore hip with CSI.
For those expecting Jack the Ripper or any high drama, forget it, as that is not what this series is.
As I begin writing this again, the word disappointing is what I feel, as this is like a writer ate Shakespeare and puked up a Beatles bad acid trip. This series was horrid, 21st century leftist cliche and it left a viewer wondering what disappointment would appear next.
The star is Matthew McFadden who I have always enjoyed, as he is the Nicholas Cage of British cinema. For some reason though the writers literally lost him in this series. To explain, he gets lost in the jumble with the other actors in the first season, where the story line is his dingy wife blames him for their daughter being washed overboard on a ship and they still hope she is alive.
By season two that story line disappears and somewhere the wife goes tits up I think, and this is the season that McFadden begins to shine and you think, "OK this series finally found it's footing". Then it goes faggot literally in promoting that trash, as it swerves around promoting Jews who apparently abandon their children to an orphanage and McFadden tries nailing the grubby house marm.
In the back drop of this is the American characters, where one is a pimp who is the CSI doctor in this and his wife is the head whore of the brothel where the doctor nails everything for free. The big drama is who can control the whore house as the brother of the American shows up with a stolen diamond, sold to treacherous Shylocks.
As you should get this by now, Ripper Street is just the place where Jack the Ripper appeared with immigrants and the rest is this gutter trash existence, where people are usually beating the hell out of each other.
Some of this might be seasons melding but it is all the same, just a bunch of people you do not want to hang around with, but a plethora of good whores who everyone wants to be around.
There is a very good actor in Joseph Mawle who plays Inspector Jedidiah Shine. He though murders people, is a racketeer and likes beating people to death. All watchable and certainly better filler than Poldark vistas of Cornwall every 20 minutes for 5 minutes.
Season three was where Ripper Street was supposed to end as McFadden's daughter reappears and the head whore with McFadden locks her mafia old man in a cell to die, which is supposed to be an ending to the series, without any mention of Jack the Ripper again as that is what this was all about.
Season four opens with a new Ripper, you will like this one as it is right up the Christian hating alley.
See these Jews were murdering in Marx and Engels all through Europe, and were forced out of Europe to "give us your poor" London and New York. In this story though there is a new twist as Russian wolves eat everyone, and happen to eat the one Christian woman among the Jewish comrades, and her little boys stand in her entrails fighting off the wolves, as of course the Jews do not help.
From this, the boys grow up in London, with the one thinking he is a wolf ripping throats out and the other gaining control of Scotland Yard.
The end of season 4 is the wolf man tearing out the throat of a copper, which leaves McFadden, his idiot daughter you hoped would die, wolf man, the whore and the pimp, with the return of Jedidiah Shine.
Joseph Mawle
Season five is more betrayal, murder, wolf man sex, incest, drug abuse and as I do not want to give away what is obvious, I will inform all that the writers apparently were pissed about being forced to take American money for two more years, so they killed everyone off, literally everyone. Then after making Matthew McFadden being dumped by a whore, as we all want to marry whores, the writers and producers apparently regretted going homicide on everyone, and needing to fill in the last half hour, you are tortured with flashbacks of Jack the Ripper in how this all started, and you are left looking at the clock at each fade to black hoping that this was the last disjointed flashback of things the entire series should have been about for five years.
David Constabile
There were about 7 good episodes in this series, that many marginal and the rest were just like that Canadian Battlestar Galactica in a complete waste of production and time watching it. It simply is frustrating with how good of an actor Matthew McFadden is, that he was wasted. It was pleasing to watch though Jerome Flynn until he was a cuckold to two whores and the pimp's brother David Costabile was a very good addition, along with Joseph Mawle.
Jerome Flynn
A bright spot was the pretty whore played by Lydia Wilson, who is sassy and strong, but then you can see all of these characters above in things like Game of Thrones which I will not watch or Gay Trek.
Lydia Wilson
As I was discussing this with TL, my assessment is to not waste your time on this Ripper Street. Granted I would love to have Harvey Weinstein give me carte blanche to do an American version of this with Matthew McFadden in a real Ripper Street, focusing on the American from Chicago who was probably one of the two Jack the Rippers as this blog exclusively posted on, that Jack the Ripper was probably two males working in tandem, as with care this would be a really good series.
In absence of that, I conclude that instead you should instead watch Matthew McFadden with the very good David Souchet in The Way We Live Now. This was McFadden's best performance and this is very good adaptation of Anthony Trollip's masterpiece counter to Charles Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit.
I also would love to do the Merchant of Venice and cast David Souchet as Shylock in he would define the role as no one else could. This though is the Ripper Street Review, and if you could get it used for a few bucks it might be worth it, but this is not any better than any of that other tasteless fair coming out of London these days with Benedict Cumberbatch riding Sherlock to death or that homosexual Downton Abbey.
It simply is best to watch the old renditions as the new fare is not worth it as it is all like bad HBO now in Soprano gone bad.
Nuff Said
agtG
