Ripper Street

[Mr_Wolf]

Quite enjoyed this and thought it had promise. Yes, there were plot contrivances aplenty and the music (once again, for a modern BBC production) was intrusive and certainly unnecessary in parts, but it looked nice, the dialogue seemed to be Deadwoodesque, Kipling-inspired blank verse and the performances were engaging. I shall certainly be tuning in for the rest.

[videoking]

I quite enjoyed it, very raw and gritty. As you said, the series has promise. Let's hope future episodes continue to be creative and innovative.

[Bernie]

An interesting thing - using 120 film for moving pictures, but probably impractical, I would have thought.

Enjoyable, in a gruesome way, and I shall watch again.

Big plot silly, though. If you had just invented moving pictures, all you had to do was point the camera out the window to make a fortune. Making snuff movies would be a very stupid and impractical first use for a world shattering invention

B

[brigham]

There wasn't a suggestion that Roll 120 film predates moving pictures, was there?

[ayrshireman]

I thought it was very good, much better than I had anticipated.

[Brian F]

There wasn't a suggestion that Roll 120 film predates moving pictures, was there?

I believe that the first moving pictures used unperforated wide film, this is mentioned in the MOMI book Muybridge and the Chronophotographers. Also there is the fact that Kodak introduced paper film 70mm wide 6.7metres in length in 1888 which was used for filming at up to 40 frames/second though the spacing was uneven.

[videoking]

An interesting thing - using 120 film for moving pictures, but probably impractical, I would have thought.

Enjoyable, in a gruesome way, and I shall watch again.

Big plot silly, though. If you had just invented moving pictures, all you had to do was point the camera out the window to make a fortune. Making snuff movies would be a very stupid and impractical first use for a world shattering invention

B

The guy seemed to be an aristocratic psycho pervert that used the films to further his wacko obsessions.

[marsey]

The premise was great , the acting and dialogue too. The story started interesting but just ended up being a bit silly. I'd have thought that they would have had a better one seeing as it was the opening programme. Still, I will contine watching as I'm sure the story will be a little more believable next week.

[ayrshireman]

Spoiler alert:


Anyone else not see what happened to Sir Arthur coming?.

I think the viewers were supposed to assume, as this was 1889, and he being of the 'harrystockracy', that Jerome Flynn would have simply belted him to get him off the girl, and then arrested him.

[penfold]

There wasn't a suggestion that Roll 120 film predates moving pictures, was there?

I believe that the first moving pictures used unperforated wide film, this is mentioned in the MOMI book Muybridge and the Chronophotographers. Also there is the fact that Kodak introduced paper film 70mm wide 6.7metres in length in 1888 which was used for filming at up to 40 frames/second though the spacing was uneven.

The first celluloid films were 70mm too, as supplied by Kodak for their box brownies......pioneering filmmakers, in order to economise, split the strips lengthwise before adding, if any, their own perforation system. Hence the 35mm film standard that is only now being superceded by digital 130 years later.
There was a heavily-whiskered libertarian - as opposed to libertine - upper class type experimenting with a camera system not unlike the one in Ripper Street, a contemporary of Muybridge and Le Prince (both mentioned in the script] but not for porn as far as we know, called Wordworth Donisthorpe. Some frames from an 1890 film of Trafalgar Square survive....but like all his contemporaries until the Lumiere Brothers, projection eluded him. I was convinced the toff was going to be Donisthorpe.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordsworth_Donisthorpe

Wordsworth Donisthorpe in 1890......

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/pics ... horpe1.jpg

[Cole]

Spoiler alert:


Anyone else not see what happened to Sir Arthur coming?.

I think the viewers were supposed to assume, as this was 1889, and he being of the 'harrystockracy', that Jerome Flynn would have simply belted him to get him off the girl, and then arrested him.

Hadn't Abaline already suggested that Sir Arthur's connections would probably get him off?

I thought Ripper Street lived up to expectations and quite refreshing not to have something bogged down with too much back-story but just get on with the action.

Initially, I wondered how the BBC could have afforded this but then when an American character appeared, the penny dropped: co-production.

Another one who'll be back next week.

[Bernie]

"Anyone else not see what happened to Sir Arthur coming?."

Jerome Flynn stuck a sword through him to save the girl.

I must look up the early history of film again - but just off the cuff, 120 size film would have been a real pig to pull down quickly, which is why 35mm with each picture only 16mm high became the standard. It's also massively cheaper, given that you had to use silver in the process. And the Geneva drive (looked that up) would have been enormous too. So I would have thought that any experiments on large film similar to that which the snuff movie man was using wouldn't have got out of the lab.

B

[ayrshireman]

Jerome Flynn stuck a sword through him to save the girl.

Yes, my point was that given the deference at the time to the aristocracy, and given that the police prefer not to take a life if they can avoid it, one might have expected a copper to have beaten Sir Arthur severely enough to get him off the girl rather than inflict a fatal wound.

Dont get me wrong, I am glad the script had Flynn's character do what he did, it gave the ending an edge. Its the ending I as a viewer wanted, I didnt want the cliched ending of so many programmes where the toff gets nicked, but sneers that his family and connections will see him free before the night is out.

[marsey]

Jerome Flynn stuck a sword through him to save the girl.

Yes, my point was that given the deference at the time to the aristocracy, and given that the police prefer not to take a life if they can avoid it, one might have expected a copper to have beaten Sir Arthur severely enough to get him off the girl rather than inflict a fatal wound.

Dont get me wrong, I am glad the script had Flynn's character do what he did, it gave the ending an edge. Its the ending I as a viewer wanted, I didnt want the cliched ending of so many programmes where the toff gets nicked, but sneers that his family and connections will see him free before the night is out.

Bit odd to see the prisoner beaten up to give information. Makes a change from all the more modern police dramas where they have to trick/persuade information from suspects!

[andrew baker]

Very stylish but a bit too much for Sunday night after the Antiques Roadshow!

I could do without the American character who seemed to belong in the Robert Downey Sherlock Holmes world. The best thing was the sudden visit to a suburb. Wilkie Collins is always going on about these over bright and new developments.

It also reminded me of my old theory that Jack the Ripper travelled by Underground. I think Whitechapel was open by then.

The telegraph was a bit steampunky. By 1889 they could have had a telephone.

A

[Bernie]

"The telegraph was a bit steampunky"

I think the world needs more steampunk.

B

[penfold]

"Anyone else not see what happened to Sir Arthur coming?."

Jerome Flynn stuck a sword through him to save the girl.

I must look up the early history of film again - but just off the cuff, 120 size film would have been a real pig to pull down quickly, which is why 35mm with each picture only 16mm high became the standard. It's also massively cheaper, given that you had to use silver in the process. And the Geneva drive (looked that up) would have been enormous too. So I would have thought that any experiments on large film similar to that which the snuff movie man was using wouldn't have got out of the lab.

B

Indeed, that is the workaround that the pioneers eventually settled on, but VERY early on (Pre '94/95) 70mm Kodak camera film (with or without perfs) was what most were working with. Yes, a bugger to get the fim moving through the camera fast enough, but in those early days the experimenters were aiming for - if not always achieving - a frame rate of about 10fps. The surviving frames of Donisthorpe's 1890 film of Trafalgar Square are 70mm or 3 1/4" wide and between 8-10 fps.....some of the Mitchell and Kenyon films of a decade-plus later are not much quicker; as you say, the raw material was not cheap...but then, none of the pre '94 films "Got out of the lab" because viewing systems were the last items to be perfected....firstly Edison/Dickson's Kinetoscope (one person at a time through a slot in a box, from '94) then the Lumiere Bros. with their Cinematographe projector from '96. So the camera is pretty close to what was happening at the time; I'm going to have to rewatch the programme now to see if they attempt projection; if so, that is the flight of fancy, but only by half-a-dozen years.

[Nick Cooper 625]

Thought this was very good, and while stretching credibility a bit, the use of the early movie camera for that specific purpose had a very Poliakoffian feel. A number of his stageplays have toyed with "what if someone back then had thought of this" concept, such as Breaking the Silence (sound films) and Talk of the City (Sixties-style TV satire at pre-War Ally Pally).

It was also good to have something of the period that made a credible stab at the vernacular of the time, as well as showing the undoubted brutal side of Victorian life. That said, I did feel a bit cheated at no actual sight of the Underground, despite a number of verbal references!

[andrew baker]

Re The Umderground

I am still waiting for someone to use CGI for accurate trains in a historical drama . They are usually hopelessly wrong. If it's steam they think it will pass when to anyone who knows it might 100 years out. I remember a 1940s loco in the Onedin Line. You might as well have Spitfires flying over.

But I wish I had the surviving part of the Douglas Wilmer version of the Bruce Partington Plans which has lovely models of accurate Metropolitan Railway trains!

Also

The London Telephone Exchange started in 1879. I know W S Gilbert had a phone in the 80s.

Whitechapel Underground station opened 1884. One Ripper site, George Yd (Gunthorpe St today and in The Avengers Fog) is very convenient for Aldgate East,

[Nick Cooper 625]

Re The Umderground

I am still waiting for someone to use CGI for accurate trains in a historical drama . They are usually hopelessly wrong. If it's steam they think it will pass when to anyone who knows it might 100 years out. I remember a 1940s loco in the Onedin Line. You might as well have Spitfires flying over.

It can also go in the opposite direction, e.. the feature film Metroland has Christian Bale making frequent journeys on trains hauled by the Metropolitan-Vickers Sarah Sissons loco, even though it supposed to be a time period when the type had been well and truly relaced by A Stock.

But I wish I had the surviving part of the Douglas Wilmer version of the Bruce Partington Plans which has lovely models of accurate Metropolitan Railway trains!

Yes, it's annoying that the R1 set doesn't include the two incomplete episodes, and doubly so now it looks like an R2 version isn't going to happen. It wouldn't be much work to add a few descriptive caption for the missing visuals, and they'd make a great extra.

The London Telephone Exchange started in 1879. I know W S Gilbert had a phone in the 80s.

I suppose it could be argued that the City of London Police might have had an "internal" telegraph system, but even so the technology wouldn't have been as "novel" as depicted.

Whitechapel Underground station opened 1884. One Ripper site, George Yd (Gunthorpe St today and in The Avengers Fog) is very convenient for Aldgate East,

The original Aldgate East station was a bit to the west of the current building, but also mid-way between it and Whitechapel was St Mary's (Whitechapel) station, on Whitechapel Road opposite Davenant Street. That doesn't seem to be directly "convenient," but it would have been a alternative to a more obvious closer exit point.

[Don Satchley]

We only just got a chance to watch this first episode. We enjoyed it and will watch the rest of the series. Deadwood it seems casts a long shadow on tv drama even to this day. Music and some dialogue paid homage to it for instance, whether consciously or not. Not as hard-hitting though which is a shame imho. Hopefully the Ripper plotline will fade and the show take on a character of its own. I look forward to watching the rest.
Don

[JezR]

A couple of years later in 1891 the first public police telephone points were opened in Glasgow. This programme is set though before it was possible to telephone nationally; trunk lines from London to Birmingham were brought into service the following year.

[ghughesarch]

Am I alone in finding the whole thing far too "Wild West" to be in any way a convincing portrayal of London in the 1890s (perhaps from being a UK/US co-production)? And though it's all rollicking stuff the almost cod-Shakespearean dialogue seems pretty clunky, over-enunciated and expositional at times too. There are some real Am-Dram performances from some of the minor (and major) characters.

[penfold]

Am I alone in finding the whole thing far too "Wild West" to be in any way a convincing portrayal of London in the 1890s (perhaps from being a UK/US co-production)? And though it's all rollicking stuff the almost cod-Shakespearean dialogue seems pretty clunky, over-enunciated and expositional at times too. There are some real Am-Dram performances from some of the minor (and major) characters.

Try and seek out Henry Mayhew's London Labour and London Poor from about 15 years before Ripper Street is set.....it's online in various places. If that's any guide, the ornate use of language has been toned down considerably to make it intelligible to modern ears.

[ghughesarch]

Am I alone in finding the whole thing far too "Wild West" to be in any way a convincing portrayal of London in the 1890s (perhaps from being a UK/US co-production)? And though it's all rollicking stuff the almost cod-Shakespearean dialogue seems pretty clunky, over-enunciated and expositional at times too. There are some real Am-Dram performances from some of the minor (and major) characters.

Try and seek out Henry Mayhew's London Labour and London Poor from about 15 years before Ripper Street is set.....it's online in various places. If that's any guide, the ornate use of language has been toned down considerably to make it intelligible to modern ears.

A rather random sample quote from that work, of some 40 years before the period depicted (so Dickens' London) recorded from an orphan boy street-seller of about 14 or 15 suggests that there was very little of the "who is this that disturbs me?"-type circumlocution that Ripper Street is irritatingly full of:

they was dear the last time as I had'em --
and spring garters a penny a pair, and glass pens;
yes, and other things. I goes to market, mostly to
Common Gard'n, and there's a man goes there
what buys bushels and bushels, and he'll let me
have any little lot reas'nable; he will so. There's
another will, but he ain't so good to a poor kid.
Well, I doesn't know as 'ow one trade's better
nor another; I think I've done as much in
one as in another. But I've done better lately;
I've sold more oranges, and I had a few
sticks of rhubarb. I think times is mending,
but others says that's on'y my luck.

[marsey]

Another enjoyable episode, but again the story seemed a little far-fetched. If the first two are anything to go by, this is going to all be a bit ott (in the same way that Deadwood was) but as I say, very enjoyable.

[Nick Cooper 625]

Am I alone in finding the whole thing far too "Wild West" to be in any way a convincing portrayal of London in the 1890s (perhaps from being a UK/US co-production)? And though it's all rollicking stuff the almost cod-Shakespearean dialogue seems pretty clunky, over-enunciated and expositional at times too. There are some real Am-Dram performances from some of the minor (and major) characters.

Try and seek out Henry Mayhew's London Labour and London Poor from about 15 years before Ripper Street is set.....it's online in various places. If that's any guide, the ornate use of language has been toned down considerably to make it intelligible to modern ears.

Jonahan MIller did a wonderful programme for Timewatch based on Mayhew's work - Voices of Victorian London. I think these days some might think that Victorian novelists were just showing off, but the reality is that people really did speak very differently back then.

[marsey]

Yes, they all spoke like Rex Harrison, didn't they?

[Nick Cooper 625]

Yes, they all spoke like Rex Harrison, didn't they?

That they did, guv-nor, Gaw' bless ya.

[robinsmith]

Tonights episode was bloody good, I thought. Thought the vicar was a rum cove from the off. I'm enjoying the series more and more as the weeks go by. I do hope this gets another series.

While 'Call The Midwife' seems to have developed into some sort of mawkish formula, this east end London set series is top notch, and a change from other easy going sunday night fare...