Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Moe Dunford, Tyger Drew-Honey, Mark Strepan, Amy-Leigh Hickman, Chelsea Halfpenny.

The Fourth Estate, the watchdogs and servers of accountability of government, law, and order, the press, whatever name you describe the journalists at the heart of many a tabloid exposure, one need not go too far to understand they have a complicity in the events of those quite rightly we deem unacceptable, reasoned with bad taste, and whilst they may be covering their backs as sales of newspapers fall worldwide, serve them with a juicy story and they could resort back to the days in which their ethics went out of the window and their imaginations run riot to the cost of human decency.

There have been many scandals where the press have been seen, witnessed, as culpable mouthpieces to the voices behind the scenes, adding a seismic cache of misdirection to the proceedings, and in many cases where such lies on the front cover have led to the systematic demonisation of certain football fans, or to the cover up of guilty men being led scot free from their prisons and back into the public eye, or the omission of facts that could have seen justice prevailed…no greater besmirching and dishonesty was on show to the public that what transpired during the darkness that was to be found during the savage reign of the man the press christened Jack The Ripper.

It was in the actions of The Star, a radical newspaper headed by the ambitious T.P. O’Connor, that could be argued that gave rise to the monster who stalked the alleyways and drab futures of the citizens of Whitechapel in 1888, and if the part documentary/part action series headed by knowledgeable experts and a cast that drew sublime energy to the dramatic scenes in the newspaper offices of the now defunct newspaper is correct in assertions, then those to whom the pen was once used in honour have as much blood on their hands as the murderer themselves.

Jack The Ripper: Written In Blood may show the aftermath of the insanity and madness of the period, but the actual damnation could be seen to the viewer as taking place in the offices governed by the M.P. for Liverpool Scotland in his role as the ringmaster of news and opinion, and by virtue of one man’s admission of guilt long after the events that rocked the East End, so we can now look back at what was an exercise in flattery, greed, and misrepresentation, of excess hubris, and which the story gave the name to the wickedness that still haunts the East End to this day.

Fred Best, often portrayed in other media as one of the heroic journalists to whom the affair was granted a ring size seat to history, is shown as one of a liability to the public safety of the time, that as he penned and took ownership of the infamous ‘Dear Boss‘ letter, at the behest of O’Connor, the festering ruin of civility was hastened and deceit prevailed in the flames.

The three-part series delves deeply into the false narrative supplied, the trail of misinformation simply by giving a deranged killer a name, a moniker that they could live up to; and just like the sheer incompetence surrounding the events in Yorkshire in the 1970s the proof that a name given can carry meaning is effectively framed.

Jack The Ripper: Written In Blood does not make a mockery of the victims, it does not glorify the result of a murderous rampage, but more honestly asks the viewer to see how one person’s deceit can put an entire public at risk; a charge of aiding and abetting surely left at the door of the press in their search for a story in the not so distant past.

A fantastic piece of insightful investigation and captured for all to remember the lessons displayed.

Ian D. Hall