10 Sci-Fi TV Shows You Can Quit Before The End

Stylish and clever, Ripper Street was a BBC production that presented itself as a sort of 'CSI Whitechapel circa 1889', a whole six months after the Jack The Ripper murders. Back then of course, they had no idea that Saucy Jack had actually concluded his business and disappeared into the annals of history, the police were still waiting to find his next victim. Edmund Reid and his team then investigate a number of crimes across the cobbles of Whitechapel that feature the first tastes of modern technology and science in a manner reminiscent of a science fiction story.

The very first episode (I Need Light) introduces the idea of a device being used to film a murder, the very first example of a motion camera. While the actions it was used to capture are hideous, nobody can deny the revolutionary nature of the machine. There are a number of other examples in the show, such as electricity being used to facilitate an underground railway. Each of these examples build a world the same way a science fiction show would.

While the first two series met with critical acclaim, viewing figures steadily dropped and the show was ended at the conclusion of it's second series. Talks began with Amazon and the show was revived as a co-production in 2015, with talk of a third series. Before that third series even aired, however, they were renewed for a fourth and fifth.

The third series is such an excellent conclusion to the story of Edmund Reid it was almost nonsensical to bring the same characters back again and the show had to do a lot of heavy lifting in order to justify its continued existence. Despite the cannibalistic serial killer storyline that ran through the fourth and fifth seasons, they didn't live up to the earlier work and this show was best left at the end of the third season.