Review: Two original BBC crime dramas Special

DI Richard Poole is back for a second series of 'Death In Paradise', while another new series takes a less frivolous approach as its detectives tackle crime in an era when forensic science was all but unknown.

As predicted here in November 2011, the BBC has come up with another series of the excellent Death In Paradise which sees Ben Miller as arguably the most brilliant detective of the 21st Century leading his small team on the mythical island of St-Marie to solve the most baffling murders dreamed up this side of Jack the Ripper. Talking of which, the other new series - a new, new series - sees a team that needs all of Poole's genius with a large dollop of inspiration and a sackful of hope thrown in, to solve the crimes that fall into their laps. The first episode of Ripper Street looked like being yet another attempt to pin the crimes of this enigmatic phantom on someone, either a brand new suspect, or one of the regulars like "Leather Apron", Aaron Kosminski or even the grandson of Queen Victoria. In fact it is anything but, what we see is Inspector Edmund Reid and his team in the East End of London assisted by a mysterious former American army surgeon tackling crime six months after the original Ripper killings. The walls of Reid's office contain genuine photographs from these killings, and one or two of the contemporaneous characters are worked in, including George Lusk, the man who ran the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, and the recipient of the infamous "From Hell" letter. Unlike Reid, Lusk is portrayed in an unflattering manner. The first episode of this series saw the team solving the first "snuff film" murder. All the actors in this drama are new faces or relatively new, certainly they will be unknown to the casual viewer, though probably not for much longer. Next week sees episode 3.

Public Domain

The notorious "From Hell" letter received by Whitechapel Vigilance Committee Chairman George Lusk.

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