RIPPER STREET
BBC America, 9:00 p.m. ET
SERIES PREMIERE: Given BBC America’s unprecedented success with Copper, the period detective series concocted by Tom Fontana, it’s no surprise the channel would present other shows in a similar vein – especially one originating from abroad, and written by someone other than an American. Ripper Street gets its name because of its setting: the rough East End neighborhood recently terrorized by Jack the Ripper. He’s nowhere to be found when this series begins, but his elusiveness, and the memory of his victims, haunts the crime-solving team in this series, set in 1889. Matthew Macfadyen stars as detective Edmund Reid, who, like the investigators in Copper, strives to bring new forensic and investigative techniques to their crime scenes. Adam Rothenberg co-stars as Homer Jackson, a Pinkerton agent from the U.S. who imports a lot of those new techniques, and Jerome Flynn plays Bennet Drake, the sergeant who prefers the old ways to the new. One bonus for hard-core film history fans: the pilot episode has a strong nod to motion-studies pioneer Eadweard Muybridge, who figures in all my Film History final exams. For a full review, see Ed Bark's Uncle Barky's Bytes.