Ripper Street: Season Three Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Ripper Street: Season Three Blu-ray Movie Review

The Divinity That Shapes Our Ends

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 23, 2015

Warning: The following assumes that the reader is familiar with previous seasons of Ripper Street and contains major spoilers for those who are not. If you are new to the series, please consult the Season One Blu-ray review for a spoiler-free introduction.

The third season of the BBC series Ripper Street is yet another demonstration of the rapidly expanding influence of streaming services. Canceled by the BBC after Season Two, Ripper Street was almost immediately revived by Amazon, which funded the third season in partnership with the show's main producer, Tiger Aspect. On November 14, 2014, just about a year after Season Two concluded, Season Three began streaming on Amazon UK Prime Instant Video.

On Amazon's U.S. site, however, the eight episodes of Season Three did not appear until the following year. While the BBC may not have been interested in continuing Ripper Street, its Yankee affiliate, BBC America, retained a loyal audience for the program. BBCA began airing Season Three on April 29, 2015, and concluded on June 17. As each new episode was broadcast, it was posted on Amazon U.S. All eight episodes are now being released on a two-disc Blu-ray set.

It should be noted, however, that the episodes posted on Amazon's U.S. site are not identical to those distributed in the U.K. The British episodes are longer by amounts that vary from three to fifteen minutes. The episodes on the Blu-ray set are the same length as those released to Amazon U.S. Apparently, it is only the U.K. that will have access to the longer versions. (My thanks to an alert Blu-ray.com member for noting these discrepancies.)

For Ripper Street's third outing, creator and principal writer Richard Warlow returned to the series' roots. Gone are the efforts to introduce new adversaries such as the corrupt Inspector Shine and the criminal mastermind Silas Duggan, who dominated Season Two. Instead, Warlow has focused almost entirely on the characters to whom we were first introduced in Season One, in the immediate aftermath of Jack the Ripper's reign of terror in the poverty-stricken and crime-ridden Whitechapel district of London. But Season Three leaps forward four years from where Ripper Street last left off. Many loose threads remain, especially after the open-ended conclusion of the previous season. In the show's latest outing, Warlow gathers those threads together with deliberate care and often shocking results.

After descending into vengeful rage in his pursuit of the villainous Shine, Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen), the melancholy head of H Division, has withdrawn into his station house, where he has meticulously compiled what he calls an "archive", a precursor to the modern filing system. Although it is a mystery to his colleagues, Reid's huge room of handwritten cross-references listing suspects, addresses, known associates and other now-standard tools of investigation will prove invaluable in upcoming investigations. Reid has had plenty of time to devote to this enterprise during the last four years. His estranged wife has died of illness, and his relationship with City Councilwoman Jane Cobden (Leanne Best) never recovered from the combination of public scandal and the councilwoman's encounter with Reid at ringside during the boxing match that concluded Season Two.

The American Capt. Jackson (Adam Rothenberg) has established a medical practice, but he remains alienated both from Reid, his former friend and commander, and from his wife, Susan, the former madam (of whom more below). Still a heavy drinker and a ladies' man, Jackson's latest companion is a London society woman, Mimi Morton (Lydia Wilson), who seems attracted both to the rough surroundings of Whitechapel and the colonial rudeness of an American boyfriend.

Sgt. Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn), having lost first the woman he truly loves, Rose Erskine (Charlene McKenna), and then the wife, Bella (Gillian Saker), with whom he tried to find a measure of peace, has left London altogether, starting a new life as a constable with the police force in Manchester. But a letter from his former superior, Chief Inspector Fred Abberline (Clive Russell), brings Drake back to London, though not without apprehension. After many years of service, Abberline is ready to retire. He plans to promote Reid to take his place, and he needs someone who knows the streets of Whitechapel to take over H Division. He wants Drake to consider the job.

As luck would have it, Rose Erskine is also back in town. Having conquered the stage fright with which she struggled in Season Two, she has become a successful and popular singer, celebrated throughout Europe. It does not hurt that she has the backing of a wealthy patron, Edgar Morton (Richard Goulding), brother of Capt. Jackson's girlfriend, who has proposed marriage to Rose. For now, though, Rose's focus is on her triumphant return to the district and theater where she first started.

This brings us to the brothel keeper formerly known as "Long Susan", who has reinvented herself as a wealthy philanthropist, Susan Hart or simply "Miss Hart". Now the owner of Obsidian Estates, the empire built by the late crime lord Silas Duggan, whom Susan murdered, she has established a hospital for the poor, run by Dr. Amelia Frayn (Louise Brealey), and is also developing low-cost housing, in cooperation with Councilwoman Cobden. In addition to Duggan's property, Susan has also acquired his solicitor, a pinched fellow named Ronald Capshaw (John Heffernan), who arranges whatever she needs.

Thus are the players arrayed when a catastrophe occurs in the season's first episode, "Whitechapel Terminus". An elaborately planned train robbery results in a horrific accident that directly affects almost everyone in the district. Even Sgt. Drake is involved, because the train on which he is returning to London is part of the accident. Past animosities and conflicts must be put aside, as everyone joins in rescue efforts, then in capturing the guilty parties. The hands that actually committed the crime are found quickly enough, but the mastermind that planned it remains elusive, and Reid will not rest until the dead and injured receive complete and final justice. His unlikely ally in this quest is muckraking journalist Fred Best (David Dawson), who lost someone dear to him in the tragedy and who focuses all his energy on ferreting out the guilty parties.

The train robbery and its aftermath trigger a cascade of consequences, some of which harken back to the earliest days of Ripper Street and none of which can be discussed here. Suffice it to say that the lives of these characters are much like the streets and alleys of Whitechapel—filled with sudden turns around which you never know what may be waiting.

Ripper Street: Season Three Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

As far as I have been able to determine, Ripper Street continues to be shot digitally (by several cinematographers) with the Arri Alexa. The image for Season Three on BBC Home Video's two 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray discs is comparable to that of Seasons One and Two, in that it is clean, detailed and noiseless. However, as with Season Two, the color palette is warmer and more saturated than in Season One, which is consistent with the greater variety of settings, including the music hall where Rose performs and the elegant residence that Susan now inhabits. The streets of Whitechapel and the headquarters of H Division remains as grimy as ever. As with Season One, filtering, banding and compression artifacts were not an issue.

Ripper Street: Season Three Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Where Season Two featured a 5.1 mix, Season Three of Ripper Street returns to the first season's stereo format, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. I suspect this was a budgetary issue, but the results are certainly satisfactory. Dialogue is clear; the sounds of the Whitechapel streets are as distinctive as ever; and the Irish-inflected soundtrack by Dominik Scherrer still lends the series its distinctive flair.

Ripper Street: Season Three Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Unlike the two previous seasons of Ripper Street, Season Three has no extras. Each disc loads with introductory trailers; disc 1 has Orphan Black: Season 3 and The Musketeers: Season 2, while disc 2 has Enchanted Kingdom, Earth Journeys and Queen and Country.

Ripper Street: Season Three Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As of this writing, Ripper Street has already been renewed by Amazon for not one, but two additional seasons. Creator Warlow left far fewer loose ends at the conclusion of Season Three, but as he has repeatedly demonstrated, his resources as a storyteller are considerable—and Whitechapel's potential for villainy seems to be limitless. As we look forward to more tales from the files of H Division, Season Three comes highly recommended, despite the absence of extras and the shorter running times.