Ripper Street is a British mystery drama television series set in Whitechapel in the East End of London starring Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg, and MyAnna Buring.

The series begins in April 1889, five months since the last Jack the Ripper killing, and in Whitechapel the H Division is responsible for policing one and a quarter square miles of East London: a district with a population of 67,000 poor and dispossessed.

Among the factories, rookeries, chop shops (food establishments), brothels and pubs, Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) and Detective Sergeant Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn) team up with former US Army surgeon and Pinkerton agent Captain Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg) to investigate the killings.

Their relationship becomes strained due to Jackson's attraction to one of her most profitable girls, Rose Erskine (Charlene McKenna), and because of his close involvement with Reid and H Division.

Reid and his wife Emily (Amanda Hale) only have one daughter, Mathilda, who was lost and presumed deceased, some months before the series begins, in a river accident (the SS Princess Alice disaster) during the hunt for the Ripper.

Rose Erskine has left Long Susan's brothel to work as a waitress at the music hall, Blewett's Theatre of Varieties.

Ten years an Inspector on the Hong Kong police force, Shine has used that experience to exert a firm grip over Limehouse's neighbouring "K" Division and the emergent Chinatown that grows within it.

Long Susan, happy as brothel keeper, is in debt to Silas Duggan (Frank Harper), who lent her funds to start the business, unbeknownst to Jackson who wants to leave London.

Historical backdrops to episodes in the second series include Chinese immigration, the London matchgirls' strike of 1888, electrical war of the currents, the Cleveland Street scandal, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Joseph Merrick (known as "the Elephant Man"), and the Baring crisis.

His intention is to steal US bearer bonds in order to bail out their financially stricken Obsidian Estates and to continue in their attempt to gentrify Whitechapel.

He is drawn back to Whitechapel after a visit from Deborah Goren, who urges him to return to investigate the murder of a rabbi at the hand of Isaac Bloom, whom she believes innocent.

Meanwhile, Drake is now head inspector of Whitechapel and still employs Jackson, who has given up his drinking and gambling in order to save money to free Susan, who is now sentenced to hang for her crimes.

When his attempts to legally free her fail, he helps to fake her death, forcing her to give up their son to be raised by Drake and his wife Rose, while Susan hides out of sight and Jackson pretends to be a grieving widower to his friends.

The site's critics consensus reads: "Gritty, sinister, and visually striking, Ripper Street is a gripping thriller, with well-crafted characters and compellingly lurid plotlines.

[36] Benji Wilson of The Daily Telegraph reviewed the first episode positively, praising the performances of the three leads, which he said compensated for the "dull grind of all the exposition" and "tedious" historical references.

These details help make Ripper Street a compelling procedural, its long form narrative and deliberate pace different from the CSI and Law & Order clones.

But the show also bears traces of contemporary influences: an underground boxing club sequence in the first episode resembles similar scenes in Sherlock Holmes (2009) so much that a coincidence is hard to imagine.

[34] Ahead of its debut in the US, IGN's Roth Cornet reviewed the first episode, discussing how "the setting is handled with absolute care and a razor-sharp attention to detail, from costume and production design to the varied vocal cadences of the players, the texture and flavor of London's East End are brought to vivid life."

"[40] Some[weasel words] female critics have not been so positive about the show, disappointed by its two-dimensional portrayal of women as either repressed wives and mothers or prostitutes.