A last hurrah for lavish TV drama (Jack the Ripper (1988))

Member Name: BlackSwan

Product:	Jack the Ripper (1988)
Date:	02/09/09 (24 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good escapist whodunnit drama

Disadvantages: Forget it if you are after a fact-based drama

Okay, by briefly glancing over the general consensus of opinion on here I can see that my opinion is a bit of an outside one. To be honest, I can see the frustration and point of those who didn't like ITV's two-part TV drama, Jack the Ripper - turned into an epic feature film as a DVD. Its flaws are just the sort that would normally make me run a mile, which just goes to show how high I rate its good points.

As the A-Z of Jack the Ripper argued, the film's main problem is the way it is bookended by an unnecessary insistance on declaring that it is a faithful dramatization of the facts surrounding the case of the Whitechapel serial killer. It is nothing of the sort. What it does is work a plot around an outrageous idea put forward by Stephen Knight's Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution. However, unlike Alan Moore's graphic novel From Hell and the Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper picture, Murder by Decree, it at least doesn't do more than hint at Knight's silly conspiracy theory. This is not a criticism of either of these pieces, although the film adaptation of From Hell is quite terrible, but a mitigation of Jack the Ripper's approach that takes the story away from secret societies and government paranoia and back to the action on the streets.

Secondly there is no real attempt at authenticity. We have glamourous prostitutes as the Ripper's victims and suspects that were never considered a possibility by the City or Metropolitan police at the time. But what film about the UK's most celebrated murderer has taken pains to write a film based purely on the facts of the case?

Jack the Ripper is a highly entertaining film because it is a final hurrah for the big budget lavish British TV dramas. From its anthemic opening and end titles to the sheer drama of the action. Michael Caine playing the troubled but determined Inspector Abberline presents a cockney hero we can believe in, punctuating each stage with lines designed to raise the goosepimples in the house. He is aptly paired by a no less dashing Lewis Collins as another real-life police officer, Sergeant George Godley.

The rest of the historical figures are re-imagined as quite interesting characters. George Lusk, in real life a middleclass freemason and respectable foreman of the Whitechapel vigilance committee, is turned into a power-hungry Marxist rabble rouser. Armand Asante gets billing directly under Caine as an arrogant imagining of the famous pioneering actor, Richard Mansfield. His work as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which played in London at the time of the killings is interwoven with the plot of the story. Then there is the neurotic depiction of the medium Robert James Lees, which adds another dimension to the melodrama.

As a fan of history I am very aware of the apparent treachery I am showing for supporting a film like this, but just because something is completely innaccurate doesn't mean it automatically qualifies as bad art. If this were the case we could outright dismiss Shakespeare's history cycle that promotes the Tudor myth as utter rubbish when, of course, they present some of the greatest characters and caricatures in drama.

Jack the Ripper proves that lavish escapist period drama need not always have to be Jane Austen style romances.

Summary: Great drama with plenty of suspense, impress production values and a first class cast