EXCLUSIVE: Matthew Macfadyen shares all the GORY details from his new TV series Ripper Street

Matthew Macfadyen has been tempted back to a major TV series for the first time since the long-running Spooks ended two years ago, in which he played a very modern role as counter-terrorism chief.

Now he has re-emerged as Detective Inspector Edmund Reid, a late 19th-century policeman whose beat is London’s East End, haunt of the notorious Jack The Ripper.

The time is April 1889, six months after the Ripper has claimed his last victim, hacking a fifth young woman to death -  and people are beginning to venture out after dark again, in the cautious hope that his murderous reign of terror is over.

Murder: Matthew Macfadyen stars in the latest TV series Ripper Street set during the time of Jack the Ripper

But is it? After all, the series is called Ripper Street.

The famously buttoned-up Macfadyen reacts with mock horror: ‘I couldn’t possibly give anything away’, he says.  ‘But I will say that Inspector Reid is a very modern policeman, and what he investigates takes him beyond the Ripper’s crimes.

'He is beginning to see huge new advances in forensics and pathology as for the first time police work becomes truly scientific, and he can see that this is the future’.

Return: This is Matthew's most recent BBC production since starring in spy series Spooks

Copper: The actor plays senior police officer Edmund Reid on the hunt in the East End of London

I watched the opening scene as Macfadyen as Reid – tall, imposing, well-dressed in  a long heavy coat and a black bowler hat, and sporting distinctively fashionable sideburns - sips his beer in Whitechapel’s packed Brown Bear tavern.

He smiles as his fellow drinkers cheer on a brutal bare-knuckle fight. It’s all good fun - or what passed for fun in the late 19th century - but Reid’s off-duty moments are numbered.

Suddenly, a scream echoes through the fog-shrouded warren of streets. The naked body of a young prostitute has been found with her throat cut. The murder has all the Ripper’s hallmarks, and panic once again grips the East End.

Ladies of the night: Prostitutes like Rose (played by Charlene McKenna) were the infamous targets for Jack the Ripper

Jackie the Ripper? Although the legendary murder is universally known as a man, some historians have suggested he was in fact a she

There really was a senior police officer called Edmund Reid - a 5ft 6ins Druid, who was one of the first people to parachute from a hot air balloon in the police team hunting the Ripper, but Matthew says he hasn’t based his character on him.

Matthew, a strapping six-footer, has played his fair share of action roles, but nothing as dare-devil as that: ‘There have been so many films, TV dramas and documentaries about the Ripper, who was never caught, of course, but I haven’t seen any of them.’

 

He hadn’t even read much about him – or, as some theories have it, her -  but he says although he would normally carefully research a subject before taking on a part, he decided to stick with the character as created by series writer Richard Warlow.

‘Inspector Reid, as we see him, has nothing of the jaded or hard bitten copper about him. I wanted to get away from the classic police chief, the seen it all, done it all sort of officer, and he’s definitely not that.

'He has a very strong moral compass. A priority of the time, I suppose. He’s not typically Victorian,  he’s not sermonising and then doing naughty things behind closed door,' he said.

Medic: An elite squad is selected to investigate the murders with Adam Rothenberg the sharp-minded US army surgeon Captain Homer Jackson

Back up: Jerome Flynn plays Reid's tough sidekick Detective sergeant Bennett Drake

‘I also found him interesting because he was very curious. He’s not afraid to try new things, unconventional ways of policing. This was even before finger-printing and they were clutching at straws in a lot of ways in trying to solve a crime.’

‘He’s quite progressive and interested in technology and, the innovations of the age, which were enormous especially in Victorian times.'

‘So there’s a lot to play with – it’s good fun.  And the writing makes it for me. Richard Warlow has a wonderful way with language, so Ripper Street is big, bombastic, colourful and grimy,' the actor raved.

Macfadyen was in Spooks between 2002-4, but returned for the finale two years ago, and It was while working on the drama that he met and married his co-star Keeley Hawes.

Tension: In the show Drake and Captain Jackson don¿t get on at all.

Autopsy: There are vivid scenes where the team have to examine the bodies of young women who have been murdered.

He remembers thinking ‘Phwoar, I fancy you’, when he first set eyes on her. She had only been married to cartoon designer Spencer McCallum for two months, but she fell for Macfadyen very quickly.

‘After just a few weeks he suddenly came out with it in the rain’, she once recalled. ‘He said, “I love you”. I thought, “Oh dear, here we go again.”'

They now have two children, Maggie and Ralph, as well as Keeley and McCallum’s son Myles.

Ripper Street is due to be shown in America and, dubbed in several languages, all over the world, with a second series commissioned even before the first episode has been publicly screened.
Whitechapel itself, with its dingy shops, factories, pubs, an orphanage, asylum, even a toymaker’s shop and of course, the police station were all recreated by designer Mark Gerhaty in a disused Victorian barracks in Dublin, where the scenes of everyday hustle and bustle were filmed. 

Modern relevance: Starring Lucy Cohu as Deborah Goran, Ripper Street is about a time that wasn¿t so long ago and it certainly feels quite resonant now

Trapped: Rose works for an exotically-gowned madam known as Long Susan, played by Myanna Buring (Breaking Dawn Twlight part 2)

It wasn’t always easy during the 19-week shoot though, because they were often held up by heavy rain:

‘It was wet, cold and then very sunny.' says Matthew, 'it’s a soggy old place is Dublin. But actually we all loved filming there.

'The barracks were like a big playground, big enough to recreate a huge area of Whitechapel, and we filmed in Dublin Castle and Kilmainham Jail, all as if it was the East End of London.’
Macfadyen’s co-stars are Jerome Flynn (Soldier Soldier, Game of Thrones), who plays his tough  sidekick Detective sergeant Bennett Drake, and American actor Adam Rothenberg (House, Alcatraz, Person of Interest) as the sharp-minded US army surgeon Captain Homer Jackson.

Each week the three of them solve a different  crime in the East End – including murders eerily similar to the Ripper’s modus operandi, so there is the constant fear that the serial killer is on the prowl again.