Fascination with Jack The Ripper thrives 120 years after the infamous spate of murders in London's East End, credited with birthing the modern serial-killer. Whitechapel is a three-part drama about a copycat killer targeting the same eponymous district as ol' Jack, with two mismatched detectives hot on the case, aided by an eccentric Ripperologist.D.I Joseph Chandler (Spooks' Rupert Penry-Jones) is an upper-class desk-jockey detective with obsessive-compulsive disorder, called in to assist Whitechapel's police force with the gruesome murder of a woman found with a slashed throat in a school's playground. Chandler's subordinate is D.S Miles (Phil Davis), a working-class detective near to retirement who takes umbrage with "plastic" Chandler being called in to lead the murder enquiry. It's the classic incompatible cop gambit, done rather broadly, although Penry-Jones plays fastidious very convincingly, while ratty Davis clearly enjoys being a sneery, disparaging hindrance.
The investigation doesn't go very well to begin with, although Miles is quick to point the finger at a local butcher whose knives might match cuts on the victim, but Chandler is unconvinced. Enter eccentric Edward Buchan (Steve Pemberton), a "Ripperologist" who wrote a book about Jack The Ripper and now runs nightly tours of the alleyways and backstreets Jack stalked in 1888. Buchan has noted similarities between the recent murder and the first canonical murder of The Ripper (same day of death, same injuries, similar location, identical body posture), and implores Chandler to consider a terrifying possibility: that a modern-day Jack The Ripper copycat is at large.
Chandler is persuaded to consider Buchan's theory and eventually comes to embrace it, but Miles and his jocular colleagues don't take Buchan's controversial supposition seriously -- drawing attention to the fact both cases have a number of key differences (the modern victim wasn't a prostitute, for instance.) Can Chandler convince his rebellious new colleagues of his crackpot idea before the Ripper strikes again?
Written by Ben Court and Caroline Ip (The Hole, Primeval), Whitechapel is certainly entertaining, but its own unique elements are unfortunately rather clichéd. Everything memorable or good about this first part had its origin in history, or came from a particular performance. Steve Pemberton is especially good fun as the debonair Ripperologist, playing a character who could easily be twisted into another of his League Of Gentlemen grotesques. The mismatched detectives backdrop had its moments (like when the grubby cops wear garish neck-ties after prissy Chandler berates them for a lack thereof), but the prejudiced cops are quite an infuriating and caricatured bunch -- and there was scant reason for their immediate resentment of Chandler. The dialogue could also be quite daft: do pathologist's really say "welcome to hell, gentlemen" when presented with a mutilated body?
For the most part though, Whitechapel's first part got by on its unoriginal but compelling concept, some gruesome make-up, a scene-stealing Pemberton, and slick direction from S.J Clarkson (Life On Mars) -- slightly too flashy at times, but it generally held your interest well. It was also a nice touch to have everything tinted sepia to evoke Victoriana, with camera lenses almost smeared with treacle at times.
Overall, Whitechapel could definitely develop into something very good in the remaining two parts, but it's a shame all the elements that don't lean on Ripper lore are so clichéd and derivative of nearly every police procedural made in the past thirty years. The whole concoction had the smell of a formulaic mystery, coasting by on its link to one of history's greatest unsolved mysteries and villains, but I remain hopeful the skrews will tighten and the writing will become a tad more innovative.
2 February 2009
ITV1, 9pm
Writers: Ben Court & Caroline Ip
Director: S.J Clarkson
Cast: Rupert Penry-Jones (D.I Chandler), Phil Davis (D.S Miles), Steve Pemberton (Edward Buchan), Johnny Harris (D.C Sanders), Sam Stockman (D.C Kent), George Rossi (D.C McCormack), Christopher Fulford (D.C Fitzgerald), Alex Jennings (Commander Anderson), Claire Rushbrook (Dr. Llewellyn), Paul Hickey (Dr. Cohen), Sally Leonard (Frances Coles), Branko Tomovic (Antoni Pricha), Sophie Stanton (Mary Bousfield), Jane Riley (Sarah Smith) & Ben Loyd-Holmes (Pvt. John Leary)
