#whitechapel tv

[carrymelikeimcute]

I will not explain but,

D.I. Chandler and D.S Miles walked so Stizzy could run.

[unwillingadventurer]

DC Emerson Kent- series 1

[hedleylamarr]

Whitechapel (2010).

[culttvblog]

Whitechapel: Series 1

Spoiler alert: this blog post gives away the conclusion of the mystery but not the identity of the killer.

Whitechapel (2009 to 2013) was an ITV series of four series. This blog post will cover the first series. This format changed over the four series, but the first series consists of a whole single mystery, in which a police department investigates killings committed by someone who is copying the killings of Jack the Ripper.

I see that the show is described as a police procedural in several places on the internet. As is so often the case, I don't think that's a fair description of the show so I'm going to have a go at broadening the online description of the show.

It really isn't a police procedural at all, in my opinion, at least not understanding police procedural to mean a show in which the investigation of the crime is the actual plot. In this show the police investigate a series of crimes, however the ongoing investigation is very much a setting for a number of human interest stories.

For a start we have a thread about the relationships within the team, particularly a conflict between Detective Inspector Joseph Chandler and Detective Sergeant Ray Miles. Chandler is considered a 'plastic policeman' by the rest of the team because this is his first murder and he's been on a lot of ocurses. Normally this would be the sort of thing which makes me lose the will to live, because I don't find that sort of tension interesting and would normally want to slap Miles for his attitude. However in this show this tension doesn't dominate because there is so much else going on, and in fact their two different approaches are contrasted to good effect in the investigation.

It is also clear that this investigation really takes its toll on the police officers, and so this show is as much about human relationships and coping as it is about murder. At one point they discuss the murder over a board game.

Then we have the connection with Jack the Ripper: Joseph Chandler was a police inspector and first to arrive at the scene of Ripper victim Annie Chapman, for example, and various other characters have names of people in the real world Ripper case. If this sounds naff, all I can say is that it isn't when you watch the show.

One of the ways the murders and show are further connected to the real world Ripper murders is that they arrest a suspect who is a Ripperologist called Edward Buchan (played to great effect by Steve Pemberton of the League of Gentlemen), which was also the name of a suspect in the original Ripper murders. Brilliantly, they take on Buchan as a sort of consultant because of his knowledge of the Ripper murders. There is also a very effective sequence where Chandler hands out books and DVDs about the Ripper murders to his team of police officers who haven't read a book in years, and suddenly they are all comparing what they're reading in the books and how it could be of reference to the current murders.

There is another very affecting scene where Buchan is leading a Ripper tour and realises that he has to stop it because he can't cope with the public's lack of reverence for the victims and bloodthirsty wish to see the scenes of the current crimes.

An element which isn't perhaps teased out to its full extent, and could perhaps have been considered as an option for future plots, is that Chandler has been parachuted in on the way to a sinecure and the power and prestige which makes decisions. The power held by the great and good is seen here but not fully expanded on: perhaps I should say that this isn't a criticism.

This complex story and investigation is told over three episodes in the first series, and I have to say it never once flags or becomes boring. It is perfectly paced and I literally can't fault the plot or production. This is some excellent television.

There are just two possible criticisms I can think of, although both might just come down to personal preference.

The first is that a show based on a historical murderer is necessarily predictable. If it's a murderer who hasn't finally been identified it can either go with an inconclusive ending or make up a conclusion, both of which might be unsatisfactory to some viewers. This show identifies the murderer but he doesn't get to justice. On reflection I don't think I was ever going to be happy with how this show ended so I'm not going to say that this is a major criticism.

The other one is that as happened in the real Ripper murders, the police interview a number of different suspects. My criticism would be that it is abundantly clear that some of them are just ridiculous as suspects, to the extent that I just think it would be unlikely they'd get as far as being interviewed under caution. One of them gets seconds into his interview before he points out that he was in police custody at the time of the murder: we all know the police are incompetent but not to notice that is a balls up of monumental proportions.

So in all a show which is far more than its listing as police procedural would suggest, with far more human interest than is apparent at first glance.

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[goodjohnjr]

Bodies (2023 TV Series)

Bodies (2023) Stephen Graham, Amaka Okafor, Kyle Soller, Shira Haas, and Jacob Fortune-Lloyd in Bodies (2023) What Is It? The 2023 Netflix British science fiction mystery crime thriller TV show Bodies. Bodies | Official Teaser | Netflix Bodies | Official Trailer | Netflix This is how The IMDb describes this TV show: A murder in Whitechapel. Four different detectives are trying to solve the…

[lifewithaview]

Rupert Penry-Jones in Whitechapel (2009) S3E1

When a vast police archive is discovered at the station, Chandler persuades a reluctant Miles that Buchan be taken on as a police researcher. That night Ben Salter and three employees are murdered in Ben's tailor shop with no suggestion of forced entry. Fear spreads through the area as folk suppose the killer to be supernatural, though Buchan sees a connection to the Ratcliffe Highway killings 200 years earlier. Chandler's main suspect is Dan Wilkie, a rival of Ben Salter as a teenager, until Ben's embittered half-brother Marcus is pulled in and placed in custody - from which he mysteriously disappears.

[lyricswrittenbythesecretdreamer]

Isn’t this just the first season of Whitechapel

[blamed-for-nothing]

[pendragonsclotpole]

hi i just started watching that 911 show in the background while working thinking it would be a basic cop show/procedural drama i could play for white noise to boost my productivity like i did with all six seasons of SWAT (shout out to shemar moore’s overly passionate pecs and BECAUSE SWAT IS FAMILY speeches and that one ryan and shane cameo for getting me through my job onboarding months ago) and avoid the attention issues i get with british legal and cop dramas (shout out to the current loml rupert penry jones on silk and whitechapel, his roles as clive reader and di chandler are iconic)

and like yes. 911 is exactly that. so cringey. so feel warm-y and trite in the worst ways possible, filled with random monologues, oddly paced and placed one-liners, random quote intros that desperately try to replicate the word bangers of criminal minds, unnecessary flashbacks interspersed in the worst episode arcs ever and completely destroying the suspense, and with the weirdest combination of over-acting and under-acting in the entire fucking world that i have ever seen, and some entire scenes i just cannot stand to watch but do anyway because of how unrealistic and ridiculous they are but oh my god when this show hits its high points, it hits them

i need angela bassett’s athena grant to come and railroad my life. i want her to point her finger in my face and threaten to cuff me to my bed like she did that boyfriend in that season one episode (and yes THAT HAPPENED THANK GOD THE BUCK CENTRIC SEXY SCENES DID NOT LAST AS LONG AS SOME OTHER SHOWS COUGH SWAT COUGH BUT WHY NO MORE ATHENA?) you my friends have not lived until you’ve seen her on the other end of a huge tv screen raising her eyebrow and acting like she’s about to beat you up with nothing more than her commanding tone.

and also like all the other fucking characters.

i watched this show hoping to have inane drama and dialogue watching over me while i send emails and plan. i did not watch this show to bite my nails over maddie buckley’s psycho ex husband storyline, nor to swoon over the romance between to her and chimney (howard han i would die for you, your bg episode was so sad but so beautiful and if you had died i wouldve been so sad, yours were the flashbacks that won me over), nor to fangirl over ROBERT FUCKING NASH AND HIS GUILT COMPLEX (I LOVE YOU BOBBY), or to have my heart grow three sizes with the fucking tsunami episode

like you guys, i was on the edge of my seat, eating my dinner and actually wondering if they were about to kill off christopher diaz and break my heart and buck’s heart and ruin everything and like they didnt but now evan buckley’s character growth is such an inspiration and i just dont want him to fuck it up by trying to go back to work early and ahhhhhhhhhhh this was supposed to be a casual watch but now im writing this so im gonna have to find something else or worse go back to watching silk or whitechapel in the bg and be enraptured by rupert

[wangmiao]

"your top 15 favourite tv shows can say a lot about your personality!"

I got tagged by the wonderful @godotismissingx for this. honestly i don't know what they say about my personality, but i just picked 15 shows from the top of my head that i think i can rewatch under my current mood. they are indeed mostly murder and crime shows (yes i'm shallow like that).

besides three-body ranking #1, the rest aren't in any particular order. bold font = cdramas; italic = kdramas; regular = western shows. *means there's at least one gay ship that consumed my soul when i first watched the show LOLLOL.

Three-Body* (2023)

Day and Night* (2017)

Winter Begonia* (2020)

Original Sin* (2018)

The Long Night* (2020)

Chimera* (2021)

The King of Pigs (2022)

Kingdom* (2019-?)

Whitechapel* (2009-2013)

Fargo* (2014-2024/?)

Better Call Saul (2015-2022)

Poirot (1989-2013)

Spartacus* (2010-2013)

Dexter (2006-2013)

Mr. Robot* (2015 Season 1 only)

tagging @bahoreal @xinxiaojie @yohankang @zhivchik @a-very-fond-farewell @randomingoftherandomness only if you haven't done this and want to do it; also tagging any followers who want to do this.

[unwillingadventurer]

Whitechapel- 4.2

[agonynatural]

dear god spn girlies. I am begging you.

hannibal girlies, you too.

watch itv's whitechapel. please.

it's got all the brainrot essentials. there's gay subtext. there's glass closets. there's childhood trauma. there's mysteries. there's a supernatural edge. there's stuff that's implied but never said. there's unwavering homosocial devotion. there's religious symbolism. there's really weird parallels. there's emotional repression. there's mental illness. there's the world's grumpiest father figure. there's the failures of heteronormativity. there's the really weird way tv handled queerness between 2005 and 2015. there's wild imagery and cinematographic choices. there's cringy late 2000s editing. there's really egregious queercoding. most of all there's daddy issues.

please watch whitechapel I'm dying here.

[petermorwood]

Funny what you hear...

A couple of days ago I found a TV series on YouTube that I haven't seen since 1973: "Jack The Ripper - Barlow & Watt Investigate".

It's an intriguing show, using two of the currently most popular TV policemen: they'd appeared in about three linked-but-separate crossover series, "Z Cars", "Softly Softly" and "Softly Softly Task Force".

However in this instance the crimes they're investigating, and the theories they're examining, are the notorious non-fictional Whitechapel murders.

*****

After about 50 years, watching this Is like seeing it for the very first time, and the very first episode contained the following exchange, which made me laugh a bit.

("Jack" is slang for a policeman, like "Bobby", "Peeler" or "cop", though I think Jack is more regionally North of England, where the Barlow and Watt characters originate.)

Barlow: "They had eight inspectors on the case." Watt: "And two Lancashire Jacks are worth how many from the south?" Barlow: "Well, at least we are Jacks. Starting with the evidence, and testing some theories. Not starting with the theory and selecting the evidence…"

*****

Why did I laugh?

It's because Barlow's final observation sums up Patricia Cornwell's infamous approach to her "Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper: Case Closed".

Like any detective-story writer, she started with her chosen perpetrator (artist Walter Sickert) then arranged the rest of the book to "prove" it was 'im wot dunnit.

It's a book crammed full of circumstantial evidence and leap-of-logic speculations such as "...while there is no evidence Sickert was in London on that date, there is no evidence that he wasn't".

Well, duh.

Cornwell goes after her target with such obsession that one reviewer - a lawyer - pointed out that if Sickert had been still alive, the book would have been Exhibit A in a case of malicious libel. (Another comment, however, suggested he would have revelled in such notoriety...)

*****

As for closing the Ripper case or providing solid proof of who he / she / they was or were, it won't happen; the speculation industry is worth too much money and new books, new names and new theories - or old stuff recycled - keep coming out, with the most recent in July of this year (2023).

The only names that really matter are Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols, Anne "Annie" Chapman, Elizabeth "Long Liz" Stride, Catherine "Kate" Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly.

They were people, not just names to tick off a check-list.

[fubureaders]

ANNOUNCEMENT/REQUEST FOR HELP ON MBAV FIC

so I've gotten back into writing (a little bit) and have been hyperfixating on My Babysitter's a Vampire for the past couple months, and am writing out the movie and tv series with a Black fem OC who ends up with Ethan (there's a second OC who ends up with Rory b/c he deserves love too). anyway, i want to attempt to give the show a season 3, so that it can have a better ending than what we got

sorry to bring up that anger/trauma from the major cliffhanger BUT which idea do you guys think works best for the opener to season 3, explaining what happened to all the vampires in whitechapel??

* says I can't make an edit to the poll once it's been published, but I've just realized that I said season 4 and not season 3, hopefully y'all still understood what I was trying to say

[lifewithaview]

Rupert Penry-Jones in "Whitechapel"(2009) S2E3

Chandler and Miles survive the ambush but another team member is less fortunate. Commander Anderson publicly berates Chandler, telling him he is off the case, but this is a ruse as Anderson rightly suspects that Cazenove is allowing the Krays to control other criminals as an expedient and wants to put him off the scent. Anderson gathers the team at Buchan's house and outlines his plan. If the Krays are exposed as impostors their grip will be broken. Buchan steals Ronnie's DNA from a museum exhibit and Chandler, after taking on Jimmy in the boxing ring, gets a sample of his blood for comparison. Many consequences follow swiftly upon the DNA result, not the least surprising of which is the deal Anderson and Cheshire make to ensure that the twins are never heard of again.

[bodies-needs-a-fandom]

Intro post! I'm so original! Wow!

Hello! My bio says the important stuff, but I'll make this anyway.

This Blog

Welcome to Bodies-Needs-A-Fandom, a blog where I obsess over this amazing show with not enough fans (hence the name). The goal is to build the fandom, basically.

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The Show

Bodies is a TV show on Netflix with a brilliantly tragic time travel narrative and awesome characters. It follows the story of four detectives in Whitechapel, London. These are: a repressed Victorian gay guy from 1890 who has a beautifully written romance with a male reporter; a Jewish man in 1941 who is acting as a double agent and working for some mysterious organization; a single mother in 2023 who adopts every child who comes her way and is an absolute badass; and a grumpy woman in 2053 with a disability, an inferiority complex, and a complicated relationship with her brother.

All of them find the exact same body, in the exact same place, in each of their time periods. Cue a very dramatic investigation for all of them, which eventually leads to a downhill spiral where the stakes just. keep. going. up.

It's a great show, hence why I made this blog.

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The Fandom

Listen, as I've said, we are a pretty small fandom. But tbh its one of the best fandoms I've ever been a part of. There is 0 drama, and loads of clever analysis posts out there, as well as some adorable pieces of art and comics! We don't have HUNDREDS of fics, but there are a fair few short ones out there and a couple longer ones as well.

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Fanfiction

I love this show enough that I made my first ever fanfiction about it LOL. If you're interested, here it is: