Returning Now to the Dark Side

BBC-TV’s Ripper Street may have concluded its second-series broadcasts in the UK before Christmas of last year, but the first of that show’s eight sophomore-season episodes is only now debuting in the States. It’s scheduled to begin tonight at 9 p.m. ET/PT on BBC America. Feel free to watch the British trailer below.



You’ll remember that Ripper Street is set in London in the wake of Jack the Ripper’s horrific 1888 murder spree, and focuses on three police officials--Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen), Detective Sergeant Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn), and Captain Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg)--charged with restoring peace and the dominance of law to their city’s notorious Whitechapel district. “In the season-two opener,” explains The Hollywood Reporter, Reid “is thrust into dangerous waters when legalized opium is suddenly being converted into heroin with assistance from the ethically questionable Detective Inspector Jedediah Shine (Joseph Mawle).”

Let’s all hope this second season is not the period drama’s last. Towards the end of last year, the BBC announced that it was canceling Ripper Street. Since then, however, it’s been reported that Amazon-owned video-on-demand company LoveFilm might be interested in reviving the crime series for at least a third season. So far, though, there’s been no final decision on the matter.