By Ramona Zacharias.

Richard Warlow

British writer Richard Warlow knows that the “Jack the Ripper period drama” has been done before. Which is why his critically acclaimed television series Ripper Street is not so much about the “Ripper” as it is about the “Street”.

Leman, to be precise, and the men who policed it and the surrounding area of Whitechapel following the infamous gruesome murders in Victorian London. What kind of atmosphere was created in the aftermath of this violence and how did Jack the Ripper’s ability to evade capture reflect on the local police department? How did those charged with the protection of Whitechapel fight the anarchy that ran rampant in its streets while coming to terms with their own inner demons and fears?

This is the setting Warlow works with and the basis for his characters Detective Inspector Edmund Reid, Detective Sergeant Bennett Drake and Captain Homer Jackson, played by Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn and Adam Rothenberg, respectively. The series loosely intertwines history with fiction, as there actually was an Inspector Edmund Reid who policed the streets of Whitechapel at the time, and even Joseph Merrick (aka The Elephant Man) features in a couple of episodes.

With its intelligent plotlines and intriguing characters, the stylish, gritty drama was, in less than two years, able to amass a fan base dedicated enough to bring it back from the grave once already. Cancelled after Season 2 and even with the proverbial nails being driven into its coffin, the series was rescued by Amazon Prime Instant Video and granted a third season. With this season having already aired in the UK and just premiered in the US via BBC America on April 29, the show’s future remains uncertain. For now, we chat with Warlow about the development of the series, what he wanted it to become, and the gift of second chances.

Charlene McKenna as Rose Erskine and David Dawson as Fred Best in Ripper Street

What was it that triggered your initial interest in this type of period drama and how did you approach the task of putting a fresh spin on an extremely popular topic?

I think, first of all, I have to start with the great HBO show Deadwood – my whole journey sort of begins there. I ate that up like a cup of ice cream over the course of one week, all three series. I just loved it and still think it one of the greatest things ever – of any art form, actually. It’s magnificent. But it sort of got me thinking about the fact that here in these islands in the UK, we’re very good at producing period drama. And the thought struck me: how would it be to actually take all those skills and apply them to a period show that was perhaps more modern and contemporary in its tone and concerns? I suppose it amounts to: what would the British equivalent of Deadwood be like and where would you go looking for that story?

So I was sort of fishing around and then Simon Vaughan, who’s one of the producers on the show, came along with this very loose suggestion about doing a crime show at the time of Jack the Ripper. I was never particularly interested in Jack the Ripper himself and there’s the notion that it’s fairly tired, old subject matter. But what I was very interested in was the idea of some policemen at that time, in that area, in Victorian London. So I had a little dig around and a think about it, and I discovered there was a police station that existed there in the middle of Whitechapel called H Division, which was based on Leman Street. And that was it, really. Just this idea that there was this police station in this incredibly lawless place, that was the major screen board.

Ian McShane as Al Swearengen in Deadwood

What had you seen done before in this genre that you thought worked? What did you believe didn’t work?

From Hell, by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

I think it’s not so much a question of what approaches hadn’t worked…I think it’s just that there are so many. There actually hadn’t been one for a while, but during the ‘80s and ‘90s there were quite a few pretty terrible movies about Jack the Ripper. There’s a great graphic novel by Alan Moore called From Hell which was very influential to me when I was approaching this. It covers pretty much everything that needed covering about him. It seems to me that with Jack the Ripper – certainly in this country – the exercise is one of people trying to get to the bottom of who he actually was. And for me, I don’t really care, you know? What’s interesting about it is that no one knows who he was and that the story has this sort of strangely magnetic effect on people. So for me, what feels like it never really worked was this need to find an answer; I was interested in the idea of not being able to find answers. That seemed like a much more appropriate basis for an ongoing television series.

There’s a quote by the real Detective Inspector Edmund Reid where he says “Whitechapel has an evil reputation and one that it does not deserve”. How did you want to portray this town?

Yes! I think – like everywhere in the world – there’s nowhere that’s just one thing, is there? We wanted to feel like it was a pretty dangerous place to be a policeman. But it also had to be somewhere an audience would want to keep coming back to. So it couldn’t be too grim and dark and ugly – there had to be some light there, a sort of vivid sense of what it is to be a human being. I think that’s what I took from that quote – two things, really. It was his fondness for the place, but that that fondness would be amidst all the death. That there’s this incredible connection to life, and the idea that people living so close to the knuckle had found some truth about their humanity.

From Edmund Reid to Joseph Merrick, what research did you do into the real-life characters that are represented in Ripper Street? How did history inform the development of your fictional characters?

So again, to reference Deadwood… not paying too much heed to the whole story in facts was always an approach that felt interesting to me. Whilst we’ve always had historical consultants on the show who have various levels of expertise, it’s always been very important for me to not be hidebound by history. But also to be fully aware of what it is I’m not being hidebound by. For example, if you’re going to throw something away or take advantage of it, I think you need to know exactly what it is you’re throwing away or taking advantage of.

The Merrick storyline is a really good example. He actually features very briefly in the Alan Moore graphic novel From Hell. So we thought “let’s try and throw him into the middle of a crime story and see what happens”. We knew that he was a resident at the London hospital at the time and we also found out that on the occasions he used to travel out of London, Merrick would have a police guard – and we sort of assumed that that would be H Division, as they were the people who policed the area that the hospital was based in.

And from there it felt like a natural extrapolation that he’d know Reid and that we could base a story around him. Look at the great David Lynch movie The Elephant Man, and how he so brilliantly connects Merrick’s condition to the condition of the Victorian era. I was quite keen to crib from him in that regard – these ideas of monstrosity and how people back then were very much convinced that the exterior of people’s bodies were suggestive of what was inside.

So it’s about trying to take things that exist in history and hone them to our kind of colorful thematic advantage.

Joseph Drake as Joseph Merrick in Ripper Street

One thing about your storytelling technique is that a lot happens in the offseason. Over the course of the following season, the viewer gets to piece together some very significant events that have happened to the main characters in the time that has elapsed. What do you enjoy about that sort of “fill in the blank” method for the viewer?

I think there are two reasons for this – one is probably the answer people would like! Which is the fact that I like leaving people with a bit to catch up. I think that engages audiences. I think that gets them asking questions and wondering about things in a helpful way. So from a dramatic perspective, that’s quite useful.

But also with our show, it’s not like we were in a situation of having a three-season order or anything like that. We had to roll with the punches a bit for each season…for example, when it came to cast availability. Certain stories we just couldn’t tell because the actor couldn’t come back for the second series. So our hands get forced by that. Which I think is part of the fun of writing a long-form drama, that all these things go on in the background and you have to adapt accordingly. I enjoy that, I think it’s part of the process.

Season 3 does explore the darker side of some of your lead characters. How were you able to give them a bit of free reign to “fall” while keeping them endeared to your audience?

Wow, I don’t know… hopefully that’s just good writing! I’m not really interested in angels – I think giving people edges and secrets and things they’re trying to get over makes them human, really. I like the tension of that as well. Particularly in the new series, what we’ve done with MyAnna Buring’s character, Long Susan…I love the tension of not being sure what it is she’s motivated by. I find that really rewarding as a writer and I hope the viewers respond to it as well.

Tell me about the support you received from both your fans and Amazon when it came to keeping the series afloat.

That was incredible. We all thought the show was dead, absolutely dead. I was booking a long holiday and having conversations about the next thing I was going to do. And we just got the sense of something building in the background. Then we heard there was a petition… and then we got a whisper that there may be a chance with Amazon. There’s a guy there who had always loved the show and it fit with how they work out there; I don’t know how they do it, but there are all these algorithms based on how people search on their website. And Ripper Street was scoring very highly there. So the possibility emerged, I think as all the people who were blogging and tweeting about it began to realize there was something building. The two things kind of fed each other.

But the extraordinary thing about it was, as my colleague Will Gould said, it was like going to your own funeral. We got to find out what everybody thought about it. So it was a very lovely experience, I do have to say.

And then Amazon has just been terrific. They’ve been incredibly supportive and helpful partners. And they’ve allowed us to make the show that we want to make. A number of people will tell you that that’s very rare, so I’m hugely grateful for that.