The series was created by Richard Warlow and lasted from 2012-2016.   It was broadcast on the BBC Two network.   The fictional series is set in the 1800’s in White Chapel, a hamlet in the East End of London, England. 

“White Chapel was considered one of the worst districts to live in even before the Ripper murders.   It was overcrowded, crime was high, living and sanitation conditions were horrendous, sheep and cattle were herded through the streets, only two in every ten children lived past the age of 5, the smell of raw sewage had to be unbearable, and each street was only lit by one gas lamp at night.   Dorsett Street was so bad that policemen had to enter in groups of four.  There were over 1200 prostitutes, some of whom plied their trade for as little as three pence or a loaf of bread.”  (https://strawberrytours.com)

Ripper Street is intense.  The series starts just as the Jack the Ripper murders cease.   At least five women’s bodies were found shredded during his or her rampage.   Killings after that were also blamed on him/her though they didn’t fit their MO (mode of operating or modus operandi).   Some believe Jack was a man but there were women trying to be licensed as doctors at that time.  If not for the strong character studies, the series would have been depressing.

Our “hero”, Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (played by Matthew Macfadyen), is based on a real policeman Edmund John James Reid in 1888.  In the series, Inspector Reid wants to develop a crime lab at his headquarters to help with identifying criminals, perhaps the first CSI (Crime Scene Investigation).   He recruits a former American military captain Homer Jackson (played by Adam Rothenberg) who was a medic in an American war.  The captain and his “wife” Long Susan (played by MyAnna Buring) operate a brothel which keeps quite a few women from walking the streets.   Houses of prostitution operated legally for the more upper-class prostitutes while the lower-class prostitutes had to wander the streets at night to sell their bodies.   Murders of prostitutes were not even covered in the newspapers, so it’s possible there were more murders committed than reported.   This made it easy for Jack the Ripper to get away with his/her murders.

This series also shows how police became the monsters that put as much fear into people’s hearts as the criminals.   Once the police saw the females’ mutilated bodies and other horrors, it would be hard to un-see such trauma or not to develop PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder.   Policemen were not allowed to use guns at first.   The lack of support financially or emotionally didn’t help either.  Detective Sergeant Bennett Drake (played by Jerome Flynn) is great as Inspector Reid’s sidekick who complained of not making enough money.  (Flynn was great also in Game of Thrones).  Eventually the Inspector works 24 hours a day and can’t relax because of the things he has seen, heard, and done.  

Drugs like “cocaine, cannabis, opium and their derivatives like laudanum were widely and legally available as painkillers and pick-me-ups in over-the-counter remedies from pharmacists.  The drugs were present in nerve tonics, throat lozenges and gargles.  They were used in local anesthetics, in wines, sherries, and ports.  They were commonplace among rich and poor alike.”    https://www.jack-the-ripper-tour.com/generalnews/sherlock-holmes-and-the-seven-percent-solution/

The most heartbreaking episode for me was in season 3, “Live Free, Live True”, in which women went to doctors to be healed after back-alley “doctors” mutilated their bodies because abortions were illegal.   I assume that the rich had their own doctors who kept their daughters’ secrets and gave abortions on demand when necessary.  

In this series, women were just starting to become doctors and running for political office.    However, even running for political office or having rights was illegal for women.    In this episode, a young woman is impregnated by her boss who loves her, but she doesn’t tell him until her near-death abortion and supposed help from a male doctor afterward.    But it turns out that the male doctor is experimenting on the young women so he can sterilize them to keep them from having babies in the future, not healing them.   The additional twist is that the young woman’s father-figure who has been with her all of her life is actually her mother, who works as hard as a man does.   I cried through the whole episode seeing what men and women had to go through in the 1800s.

Today, a little responsibility by both parties would make abortions less necessary.   Condoms as contraception are free in many places like colleges, some doctor’s offices, etc.  And, abortions were never meant as birth control.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

Lucifer is an American dark comedy in which a fallen angel, “the devil”, still retains all his vanity as an angel and develops a disdain for his job as a punisher of sinners after they die.   It is set in the police detective world of Los Angeles (the city of angels).

Los Angeles and the music are characters in the show.   Each episode begins with a scene of the city from the air.  Although I found out that the location was Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada.   The special effects are spectacular, and, this character, Lucifer, doesn’t have to show his real face very often.

The premise of the series is that Lucifer Morningstar, the fallen angel of light, takes an unapproved vacation from his job in hell.   He is portrayed by the deliciously handsome Tom Ellis as a spoiled brat who is always mad at his Father, God.   (The first time I saw Tom Ellis was on an episode of Poirot in which he was portraying a police detective.)   Lucifer has no idea what is required to actually live among humans.   He exposes humans to countless dangers just by being himself.

He soon finds out that there are consequences for helping humans—consequences causing them to die and go to an unguarded hell as well as causing the human body count to soar when the sinners escape.

In the first episode, he and a female singer that he helped to super-stardom are gunned down, but of course, he doesn’t die.   He was giving her advice to get herself together at the time.  As I think we all know, not everyone can handle fame.   Lucifer meets detective Chloe and starts showing up everywhere to help her solve murders, including this first one.   Because he is an angel of light, he has a hypnotic effect on humans which he uses in his detective work.

Unlike movies where angelic hosts take a vacation, live among us, or are sent to help a priest out, as in the movie, “Death Takes a Holiday”, the tv show, “Supernatural”, tv show, “American Gods, movie “The Preacher’s Wife”, and the movie or tv show, “Hercules”, in which the gods constantly interfere with human life, Lucifer, however, indulges in his favorite things–alcohol, sex, and song.

The characters of the show are diverse and believable:

• D.B. Woodside is Lucifer’s angel brother, Amenadiel, who unsuccessfully, per Father’s instructions, tries to convince Lucifer to go back to his job in hell.   (A hunk and a half.)
• Lauren German is the beautiful police detective, Chloe Decker, who is manipulated into partnering with Lucifer with him as her police consultant who helps her with cases.
• Kevin Alejandro is Chloe’s handsome husband, Dan, who is separated from his wife and tries to get back with her.  (Kevin was great in the HBO tv series “True Blood”)
• Scarlet Estevez is Chloe and Dan’s cute little daughter who befriends Lucifer and Mazikeen.  The voice of wisdom most of the time and she likes chocolate cake.
• Rachel Harris is beautiful Dr. Linda Martin who ends up being everybody’s therapist and in danger as well because of her job.
• Lesley-Ann Brandt is excellent at portraying Lucifer’s beautiful demon body guard, Mazikeen, who can kick ass 24/7.
• Aimee Garcia is Ella Lopez, the cheerful beautiful LAPD forensic scientist.
• Tricia Helfer is Charlotte, Lucifer’s beautiful but manipulating mom and ex-wife of God.
• Tom Welling is police lieutenant Marcus Pierce as well as a mysterious character.  (I loved him as Superman in the tv show Smallville, and what a hunk he still is.)

The creators of the show are Neil Gaiman (author of American Gods), Sam Kieth (comics artist and writer), and Mike Dringenberg (comics artist).

However, there is a disconnect after season 3, episode 23 in which Chloe sees Lucifer’s real devil face for the first time.  In the last two episodes, S03:E24 and S03:E25, her realization of his true identity is not addressed as though it didn’t happen.  The series was just digging into more of Ella, the forensic scientist’s backstory and new characters like the Angel of Death.

This was a show on Fox until its fourth season was canceled because its fanbase was too small.    And, due to those fans who complained, Netflix picked up the show for its fourth season.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

For those Agatha Christie mystery fans, I saw the “David Suchet on the Orient Express” documentary on public TV.  If you have ever seen the many tv/movie versions of her “Murder on the Orient Express”, you know that David Suchet is the consummate Hercule Poirot, her lead character. I’ve seen Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov perform as Poirot in the past, but they played their part more like comedy.  Kenneth Branagh’s recent performance as Poirot was good drama, but his mustache was so big that it was distracting as was his grey hair.   For me, David Suchet’s dramatic portrayal for Murder was the best.

David’s Poirot has the most expressive eyes I’ve ever seen. He can stop you with a look. Besides being one of the vainest characters I’ve seen (besides Sherlock Holmes), Poirot is also one of the most insightful characters ever developed.  His too-tight collars, too-tight shoes, and Belgian accent let you know just how vain his character was.  David has played Poirot for a quarter of a century in 13 series, including 50 short stories and 33 novels. (Being Poirot kokopico)  I love David Suchet’s Poirot.

Imagine yourself in the situation of knowing a man had been stabbed a dozen times in his sleep by someone.  And, you are asked to determine who killed him.  Did the punishment of the man fit the crime?  And, would you be justified in walking away knowing the man’s original crime set all of this in motion?  Get Agatha Christie’s novel or see Murder on the Orient Express in public television movie form.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

The series started with Clay (played by Greyston Holt), an anthropology professor, who we soon find out is a werewolf .   He falls in love with his human student, Elena (played by Laura Vandervoort), and brings her home to meet his “family”.

However, Clay is also the Enforcer for the werewolf pack who should have known better.  Chances were that something would go wrong, and it did.  The alpha pack leader, Jeremy (played by Greg Bryk), would have killed Elena if she had seen him change from wolf back to human.   Clay, believing that Elena saw Jeremy’s transformation back to human, bit her to save her life.   But, the leader assumed that she would die from the bite anyway, as had all bitten women in the past.  However, Elena painstakingly survived the transformation.   After she was free to leave, she ran away back to the big city, hating Clay for biting her.  In the two years that she was away, she fell in love with human Phillip (played by Paul Greene).

Werewolves were a supernatural race of half-humans who were male-ruled and didn’t have females at all.   Human women were used as tools to give birth to male werewolves that the women could never claim.    The “happiness” of existing in secret male wolf packs was always short-lived.   Secrets and lies kept the werewolves below the radar for centuries.

However, when the outside wolf packs learned about Elena being the only female werewolf to survive, they all wanted her for breeding.   Leader Jeremy went by a code of honor that was no longer being used by outsiders.   Enemies to their pack were from within and without of their society–other werewolf packs, mutts (werewolves without affiliation to a pack), witches, the law, etc.

For instance, all his pack’s enemies used weapons, anything from knives, drugs, guns, computers, etc. against Jeremy’s pack which usually fought bare-handed.  Jeremy made several fatal decisions trying to live by the traditional rules with which he was raised.

There were sizzling sex scenes and lots of violence (hey, we’re dealing with werewolves here!).  But, I believe that Bitten was a great vehicle for the actors’ careers, especially for Laura Vandervoort.   A woman having two good-hearted and good-looking men who desire her is a fantasy that some of us women have.  The actors made me believe in their werewolf society.   The actors were also diverse in race and language.  The special effects were meticulous, showing great attention to detail.

Bitten was a Space Canadian tv series broadcast by Syfy from 2014-2016 and based on the Women of the Otherworld series of books by author Kelley Armstrong.   I only saw the first season because when the show went on hiatus, I had a hard time resuming watching it.   I can’t keep up with new start dates, changes in week days and times, etc.  Thanks to the library’s DVD copies, I was able to watch all 3 seasons of Bitten recently.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

A few years ago, I read the 496-page crime novel, The Alienist, written by Caleb Carr, originally published in 1994, but I wasn’t in the habit of making notes then.    The film rights to Carr’s book were purchased by Scott Rudin and Paramount Pictures but didn’t come to their television division until nearly 24 years later when a 10-part-event tv series was adapted.

I watched a marathon of the first season of The Alienist television show on TNT recently.  All the characters were deeply flawed.   And, adult men preyed on young boys who only wanted to survive, eat, and find a place to sleep.   Some boys had poor parents while others were homeless.  Prostitution of boys was not shown in history as much as that of girls.

Doctor Laszlo Kreizler, played by Daniel Bruhl, attempted to solve the murders of young boys by using the 19^th century version of psychology.   Of the people he recruited to help him, the doctor pointed out everyone else’s faults but his own.   He has book learning, but the “friends” have common sense enough to add up the facts and draw their own conclusions.    He needed all these people to come into his life or he eventually would have ended up in an asylum himself.   He had read all the popular writers in his field of psychology and tries to help others of lower standing in society, but he himself was emotionally and physically disabled.

His housekeeper, Mary Palmer, played by Q’orianka Kilcher, hooked his shoes and helped him to dress as well.   She didn’t speak at all, but the looks she gave the doctor and others was understood.  The doctor and Mary became lovers.

The newspaper illustrator and painter of portraits, John Schuyler Moore played by Luke Evans, lived with his grandmother and ventured into the city’s red-light district nightly to have sex with the same prostitute and drink, reliving a love lost.   He tried to use his knowledge of brothels to help find the murderer, and in trying to be of help to the doctor, got himself into dangerous situations.

Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, played by Brian Geraghty, is a quiet honest man among corrupt police (like Captain Connor, played by David Wilmot, counting bribe money openly in their offices) and political crooks (like former police commissioner Thomas Byrnes played by Ted Levine).   Roosevelt was Police Commissioner in New York in 1896 and “authorized the purchase of a standard issued revolver for the NYPD”.  It was the “Colt New Police Revolver in .32 Long Colt caliber”.

The Police Commissioner’s female secretary, Sara Howard, played by Dakota Fanning, was rare in the police department at that time.   Though she dressed appropriately for her job, she was raised like a boy and drank whiskey in public.   Sara was abused by her male co-workers in a male-dominated profession.  She had a good mind, but she too felt like an outsider socially and emotionally.

The two Jewish detectives, Marcus and Lucius Isaacson (played by Douglas Smith and Matthew Shear), did the research for the doctor, introduced new criminology techniques they heard about such as fingerprinting, etc. to help find the murderer. They, too, were treated like outsiders and were also in danger.

The doctor’s Black male servant, Cyrus Montrose, too, (played by Robert Wisdom) was always ready to serve and defend the doctor in this dangerous undertaking.

Stevie Taggert, played by Matthew Lindzt, was the young boy who went under cover in the brothel which catered to older men by providing young boys for sex.

Maxie, played by Dominic Boyle, was the main male prostitute who dreamed of being free like one of the murdered boys.

I really liked the historical flavor of the show with the fights for rights that were going on then:  women’s suffrage (right to vote), one woman in the police department, etc.  The mutilation and slaughterhouse ripping of the children’s bodies brought tears to my eyes, but the men who ran the brothels were just as much to blame as the murderer.

As usual, the rich got away with their bad habits that would put the average person in jail.   While the poor might sleep several generations in one apartment.  Mass production did give people jobs, but those people were treated as part of the machinery with no safety precautions, lived in housing that should have been condemned, and had no medical care, nourishing food, or living wage.

TNT definitely knows drama!

Other sources:

Wikipedia

IMDb

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

I feared for the talented and energetic Bruno Mars and his Hooligans dancing outside on top of the Apollo Theater marquee in Harlem, New York, when I saw their 24K Magic Live at the Apollo show on CBS November 29, 2017.  After all, the building is 77 years old.

They did the Apollo proud with their stylish singing, dancing, and playing musical instruments.  I saw Bruno Mars sing a love ballad on an award show a couple of years ago.  Who knew that he would blow up!   My favorite song of his is the ironic love ballad “Grenade” in which he sings about the great lengths to which he would go to save his loved one (taking a grenade, train, bullet, etc.), but his loved one wouldn’t do the same for him.  I love the line– “…Tell the devil I said hey when you get back to where you’re from.”

I also saw Kathy Bates do a great impression of his 24K Magic song on the Lip Sync Battle television show recently.

www.doowopsandhooligans.weebly.com/band-members.html

www.apollotheater.org/about/history

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

By Rosa Griffin

War is declared—old gods versus the new gods in April 2017!    What a climax for the finale of the first season of Starz’s American Gods cable television show.   Mr. Wednesday shows who he really is in the finale.  And, he gets Easter (or Ostero), female god of spring to reveal her true power that she held dormant for a long time, taking a back seat to new gods being worshipped.   So many gods, so little time.

Old gods were waning because they were no longer being worshipped.  New gods like technology, food, gambling, drug and sex addiction, etc., were moving into their territory and being worshipped.   Mr. World is a new god who sees no necessity for a war if the old gods join the new gods.   The cast is a delicious mix of diverse veterans as well as actors lesser known to me.

Dealing with the fickleness of the gods had always been violent.  And, if a few thousand humans were killed along the way on many occasions, it was to be expected.  Human survival has never worried the gods.

Old gods

Ian McShane plays Mr. Wednesday, who you know is either a powerful or crazy “man” from the beginning.

Rickie Whittle plays Shadow Moon, Mr. Wednesday’s human sidekick.

Emilie Browning plays Shadow’s wife, Laura, who died and came back mysteriously.

There is a “man” that leads you after death and also dresses dead bodies like a mortician.

Another “man” who dips his pen in “ink”, writes the stories told in a book, and helps the dead body dresser.

Pablo Schreiber, the tall handsome red-headed/bearded leprechaun, Mad Sweeney, is used as a pawn working for Mr. Wednesday and shares in the guilt of Laura’s death.  He explains to Laura that good people suffer sometimes more than bad because of the whim of the gods.

Yetide Badaki plays Bilquis the goddess of love who swallows her worshippers whole.

Gillian Anderson plays the modern goddess Media who looks great as the modern women of media like Lucille Ball, etc.

Peter Stomare (one of my favorite actors) as the old Slavic god who kills with a hammer.

Corbin Bernsen as the Vulcan god of guns, based on the Roman god of weaponry and fire.  He snitches to the new gods.

Orlando Jones, Mr. Nancy, convinced me that he could tailor suits for Mr. Wednesday and Shadow Moon, although the spiders hanging around his threads were creepy.

Adult themes only.   All are pawns in Mr. Wednesday’s game of the combat to come.

The histories of the characters are wonderfully and painstakingly developed.   The cinematography and special effects held me spell bound.  The writing is flawless.  I can’t wait until next season.

New:  Ricky Whittle (aka Shadow Moon) compares American Gods [Starz] to Game of Thrones [HBO].  “He was adamant about the Starz series being something new that exists in a different space than its peers…completely fresh.”   One reviewer said that “American  Gods uses color as a language on its own.”   The article author calls both shows “immersive, supernaturally-infused world they can get lost in”.   American Gods will return to Starz on March 10, 2019.

Source:  “American Gods’ Ricky Whittle Thinks His Show Is ‘More Beautiful’ Than Game of Thrones”, Charles Pulliam-Moore, March 7, 2019.  io9.gizmodo.com.cdn.ampproject.org

Written by Rosa L. Griffin