Just have a look at the two DVD covers up here and you'll immediately notice the similarities. They stroke me while recently watching Ripper Street, the successful BBC1 series starring Matthew Mac Fadyen. I had finished watching BBC America Copper on Fox Crime (one of our pay tv satellite channels) not long before.
Tough, fascinating, torn between their duties and tragic, painful personal experiences, the two protagonists are police detectives fighting crime, respectively in New York and in London, in the 19th century. Their love for justice, their frailty hidden under a tough surface, as well as their charming looks can get under your skin.
Copper 1864. Kevin Corcoran (Tom Weston - Jones, already seen in Spooks 10 and World Without End) is an Irish copper living at Five Points, recruited by New York Police Department after coming back as a war hero from the battlefield of the civil war. He came back home where a terrible shock was expecting him: his wife's disappearance and the murder of their little daughter. Corcoran can count on loyal and brave mates, Francis Maguire - closest friend and partner in the Sixth Precinct - and Eva Heissen - a shrewd businesswoman who runs a saloon and a brothel -
who are ready to risk their lives and to cover up truths to prevent him from suffering more. He has friends among the aristocracy too, despite his humble origins, Robert Morehouse - a handsome bon vivant who was in the 71st Regiment with Corcoran - and an extraordinary help in doctor Matthew Freeman - an African- American physician who was Morehouse valet during the war.
Copper is the first original period drama series produced and broadcast by BBC America (they usually broadcast overseas transplants) and I'm glad we could see on Italian pay - TV channels (Fox Crime). It is gritty and gripping, different from the British series I love watching, pretty American in fact, both in the shooting style and in context and background. It is based on a good blend of action and introspection, has a myriad of interesting characters, pays attention to social - historical problems and touching human relationships. Twists, turns and suspense till the very last minute of the final episode. Looking forward to series 2, since Copper has been recommissioned.
Ripper Street 1889 - Detective Edmund Reid (Matthew Mac Fadyen already seen in Spooks series 1/3, Pride and Prejudice, The Three Musketeers, Little Dorrit, The Pillar of the Earth) teams with Detective Sergeant Bennett Drake and US Army surgeon and former Pinkerton agent Captain Homer Jackson to investigate mysterious killings six months since the last Jack the Ripper killing, in Whitechapel.
Each episode has got its own case to be solved and its own good quantity of social - historical issues depicted in it: prostitution, anarchism and workers' strikes, Victorian hypocritical respectability, the imperialistic wars, the project of electrical trains underground, and others.
It is a brilliant series, thoroughly scripted and shot, with an incredible cast including Jerome Flynn, Amanda Hale, Adam Rothenberg, MyAnna Buring, Charlene MacKenna.Watching the two period crime-fiction series back to back, it was impossible not to notice the various analogies. Same historical setting, the second half of the 19th century, but different geographical reality , the two detectives share a close knowledge of the lowest suburbs of their own city, both are tolerant with the business of the local brothels, both cry a dead/missing little daughter, they have a smart doctor in their team / as a friend. Their apparent toughness hides a very sensitive, complex personality.
Also Ripper Street has been recommissioned. We will see series 2 in 2014.
Copper Official Site Ripper Street Official Site Copper DVD Ripper Street DVD
