Entertainment

Jack on the box

Fans of Victorian-era drama redolent with dark, grimy streets and smoky pubs, dimly-lit brothels — and, yes, Englishmen with bad teeth — will enjoy “Ripper Street,” a new eight-part miniseries premiering tonight on BBC America.

While I couldn’t help but think of CBS’s “Elementary,” and the parallels to Sherlock Holmes (more on that later), there’s enough intrigue, suspense and interesting characters here to make “Ripper Street” a worthwhile viewing endeavor.

The series opens in 1889 in London’s East End. It’s been five months since Jack the Ripper has maimed and murdered his latest victim — they’ve all been prostitutes — and the city is gripped by fear and paranoia as it nervously awaits the elusive Jack’s next strike.

So it’s with a sense of foreboding that Insp. Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen), who’s been working the Ripper case, tackles the latest East End murder — a young woman found on the Ripper’s turf in Whitechapel with physical marks similar to past Ripper victims (throat slashed, eyes and face sliced and a taunting message nearby).

In an effort to avoid widespread hysteria at what appears to be the Ripper’s next victim, Reid and his partner, Sgt. Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn), secretly take the murdered woman’s body back to headquarters for an autopsy conducted by Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg), a shady American forensics expert with a weakness for prostitutes who’s also very good at his job — but seems to be hiding some deep, dark secret from his past back in the States.

I mentioned “Elementary” earlier; Rothenberg’s Homer Jackson reminds me somewhat of Jonny Lee Miller’s Sherlock Holmes from the CBS series; his forensics skills seem more “CSI” than 19th century methodology — the only false note here.

To say any more of tonight’s plotline would be to spoil the fun, but rest assured that there are a series of action-packed twists and turns — with some surprising revelations. I’ll be tuning in again next week.