Take a good look at the way Detective Inspector Reid runs his department and it's not terribly difficult to see why his show just got cancelled. He started series one as a considerate and responsible employer whose only fault was his decision to hire the rather unpredictable Captain Homer Jackson, a retired army surgeon and former Pinkerton who identifies drugs by tasting them, brings a gun to work and on one occasion got so high he kept threatening to shoot his colleagues "for a joke". However by this time we knew that Reid had tragically lost his daughter in mysterious circumstances and his wife to charity work (how dare she find an outlet to cope with the death of her daughter!) so we excused him not asking questions like 'is this a safe work environment?' and 'what does a battlefield surgeon know about recreational drugs anyway?' Then we found out that Reid's daughter had disappeared (presumed dead) during a man hunt for the Ripper. Which he took her to. This botched attempt at Take Your Daughter To Work Day resulted in the single greatest 'You think?' moment in the history of television when he finally admitted the truth to his wife and conceded that maybe he shouldn't have taken their preteen daughter to hunt a dangerous serial killer. There was also the episode where Captain Jackson shot a guy in broad daylight and Reid announced to the crowd that they hadn't seen anything. I think the writers where going for something along the lines of the redemptive power of friendship but to me it always seemed more like a dystopian police state. From the first episode of the second series Reid's tendency to overlook the law went from a morally complex question of compassion vs justice to someone who just did whatever the hell he liked. The villain of the week was supposed to be Blush Pang, a Chinese immigrant who peddled heroin, a drug so new it wasn't even illegal, and who was figuratively and literally in bed with the corrupt inspector and recurring bad guy Jedidiah Shine. The episode ended with a screaming Blush Pang being dragged away on Reid's orders with the promise she'll spend her life in prison (out of pure spite towards Shine) when her only crime is stabbing a guy who was attempting to kidnap her an action which saved lives, lest we forget. Remind me again who the corrupt police officer is in this scenario? If it's Shine it's only because Reid has surpassed him by going into cartoonish levels of evil that would make a Disney villain reconsider their life choices. The final episode of Ripper Street ended with Reid at a bare knuckle boxing match literally screaming "kill him" and meaning it. The competitors are Shine and Reid's recently widowed sergeant Bennet Drake whose trauma at his wife's death probably isn't being helped by this situation. It was difficult watching the final episode of Ripper Street to reconcile this man to the mild-mannered, introspective Detective Inspector who discussed theories of utilitarianism and advances in science in his spare time. Character development, Reid's fans might say, although I don't think 'development' is quite the right word in this case.
Kate Taylor has a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing and an MRes in Creative Writing. Her nonfiction, reviews and other articles have appeared on Cuckoo Review and Mookychick as well as WhatCulture. Her fiction has been published in Luna Station Quarterly, Eternal Haunted Summer and in anthologies by Paizo and Northumbria University Press. She is 23 and lives in the North of England.
