BBC’s Ripper Street

Last year BBC America had it’s own program called Copper.  It’s a good show about cops and killers in New York in 1864.  Ripper Street is a BBC show that looks and feels a bit like Copper.  It’s the story of  cops, whores, and steam-punk CSI. The BBC is a bit more graphic in it’s display of mutilated bodies than CSI and the high tech used to solve crimes is a microscope instead of a laser.  Like most cop shows we have a Crime, a Detective, and a Solution.  The window dressing is Victorian London, Whitechapel to be specific.  The…

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Downton Abbey comes to PBS

Downton Abbey is one of those rare shows that was able to surprise me.  Not once, not twice, but almost constantly.  The writer did a brilliant job of directing my expectations in one direction and then doubling back and surprising me. The story is a familiar one, another tale of that fantasy world that existed in the British Empire for about thirty or forty years where a rich family owned an Estate and a Staff of fifty were needed to run the House of that Estate. Downton Abbey is the story of The Lord of The Manner, his rich America…

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