Jack the Ripper: Suspects

 "The Ripper played cricket?!!!"

Here I go again, with yet another Jack the Ripper. Fear not, though: tomorrow is Doctor Who, so it won'ty be five consecutive episodes in succession.

This continues to be entertaining stuff but, well, we get a series of lacklustre suspects all linked to czarist Russia, with even Rasputin getting a mention, before things start to get back on track. Still, this never fails to hold the attention and we do, at least, confirm the point that the relevant archival material is somewhat lacking.

Then we get to M.J. Druitt, a plausible-seeming suspect although, I'm sure, one of many... and we can never be sure whether or not he was a Freemason or not. And then off we go on a royal-themed tangent. That's it, although we do at least focus on the point that there must be a reason the Ripper stopped in November 1880 Did he die, move away, get himself committed to an asylum? Like the Freemasonry stuff, this is a point that needs to be explained.

The last two episodes, while good, haven't matched the gripping intensity and intelligence of their predecessors. Let's hope the same can't be said of the final episode.

Jack the Ripper: Double Event

 "Good at stopping riots, bad ar catching Rippers!"

The second episode is as gripping as the first, with the conceit of Barlow and Watt simply discussing things intelligently being utterly spellbinding television. Once again, this is a drama that does the job of a documentary, but the personalities of our two protagonists add so much more. We even get a dig, this being 1973, of Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher's recent milk snatching antics.

We follow on from the first two murders by looking up at the killing of "Long Liz" Stride, where the Ripper was interrupted, and the immediately following murder of Kate Eddoes, where the Ripper's grisly modus operandi was in full effect. There's much to interest us, from an analysis of descriptions to suggest the Ripper's appearance to speculation that he may not have been left handed after all.

Much is made of the distinction between the area covered by the Metropolitan Police, run by the authoritarian martinet Sir Charles Warren, he of Bloody Sunday the previous year, and the City of London Police, under Major Henry Smith, a seemingly more eloquent and thoughtful character.

Yet we end with something truly extraordinary as the pair discuss the famous graffito "the Juwes are the men who will not be blamed for nothing". The unusual spelling "Juwes" is said to refer to freemasonry, something familiar to those of us who have read Alan Moore's From Hell.... yet this idea is supposed to have begun with Stephen Knight's famous 1976 book. This is three years earlier, when the freemasonry suggestion was not supposed to have been posited. Wow.

I know: I'm supposed to be blogging The Defenders. Next blog post, honest. But I just couldn't wait.

Jack the Ripper: The First Two

 "A middle class Ripper...?"

Yes, I know, this is a fantastically obscure bit of telly. It's a drama, not a documentary, from 1973. It's a spin-off of a spin-off. Two popular detectives- Detective Superintendents Barlow and Watt from Softly Softly, a spin-off from Z-Cars (and no, I'm not going to blog those very old, mostly missing series!) spend the whole episode just investigating and discussing this very cold case, the documented statements from witnesses, police surgeons and the like being nicely dramatised. The effect is something that feels very much like a documentary, and a good one. But it isn't.

Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor are awfully good, excellent actors with loads of charisma. Even just the two of them intrelligently discussing the case is splendidly entertaining in itself, and that's before we get to the dramatised bits.

This is deeply engrossing. It doesn't neglect the social context of 1888- a time where women and boys are sent out of the room at the inquest as the Ripper's incisions to poor Annie Chapman's genitals are described, yet there are 80,000 prostitutes. There's a scene where Charles Booth describes the poverty of Whitechapel. And impressions begin to emerge. A left-handed killer, middle-aged. One with anatomical knowledge and the decidedly middle class of luxury to dispose of the blood from his clothes and so on. Yet a middle class man who would not look out of place in Whitechapel.

The format works brilliantly at acquainting us with details: instead of a dry narration, we get two senior detectives dicussing, debating, questioning the evidence intelligently. Why, for instance, was Annia Chapman killed at 5.25am, when day was well into the process of dawning, rather than earlier? Why such intricate ceremony, taking quite some time after each murder? I know not. But I'm already engrossed.