Take Heed Coppers: There’s a New Opiate in Town – Megan Applegate with a recap of the series two premiere of Ripper Street…
Whitechapel’s Not All That Different“The Ripper has faded”…but the old neighborhood’s still pretty rough.
It’s now 1890 in Whitechapel. Emily has left Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) after the false hope of their daughter being alive proved too much. Detective Sergeant Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn) has moved past his unrequited love for Rose Erskine and married another brothel girl, Bella.
Cue Shattering Glass
Season 2 opens with a young sergeant making his way through a tenement seeking out the mysterious “Blush Pang.” Cut to our man in uniform falling from a shattered window on the metal spikes below making a mess of himself and his poor legs. What was he after? Who was Blush Pang?
Seems there’s a new Chinatown popping up and when our three crime-fighting amigos being their investigation, they find themselves introduced in the most unceremonious way to division K’s Inspector Jedediah Shine (Joseph Mawle), a perfect nemesis for our beloved Inspector Reid this season.
The trio uncover a dangerous new opiate set to flood the streets of London and it’s a race against time to slow the spread of the deadly heroin.
A Moustache-Twisting Bad Guy
Reid’s division K housed the majority of the new influx of Chinese immigrants, which has now spilled into Whitechapel’s H division. To boot, it comes to light that Inspector Shine’s spent the past ten years in the Hong Kong police department. Potential conflict of interest? What about a crooked cop? The storyline certainly is ripe for Shine to play the heel and when Shine’s sergeant ends up dead in the hospital, Shine wastes no time pointing fingers and accusations at Reid, with no one but the Elephant Man, Joseph Merrick, himself to serve as witness.
We’re left with the Teflon-coated Reid looking dismayed and terrified at the same time. Corruption abounds in London and it’s landed (seemingly) at his feet.
Megan Applegate
Originally published March 2, 2014. Updated April 11, 2018.
