Our Rory Cashin managed to get himself a sneak peek of Ripper Street, a BBC/IFB and Element Pictures production shot entirely in Dublin, which is due to air later this year. Here are his initial thoughts…

RIPPER STREET: EPISODE ONE. 'I Need Light.'

It’s 1889, and we’re in the East End of London. The local police force have barely managed to keep the town of Whitehall from descending into chaos after Jack The Ripper’s mysterious murder spree, and the equally mysterious fact that the murders came to a sudden stop. In the midst of this, a woman is found murdered and the manner in which she was killed is very similar to The Ripper’s M.O., so it’s up to Detectives Reid (Matthew McFadden) and Drake (Jerome Flynn), as well as mortician Captain Jackson (Adam Rotherberg) to figure out if this is indeed the return of Jack The Ripper before the entire community panics themselves into a frenzy.

This is the fantastic set-up to the first episode of Ripper Street; an Irish-English production, funded by the BBC, the Irish Film Board and Irish production company Element Pictures, shot entirely in Dublin. The lavish pilot episode does a fantastic job of recreating the setting - all cobbled streets, grimy civilians, roads paved with trash and prostitutes. Director Andy Wilson, fresh of Sky One’s mini-series Sinbad, gets great performances from his three leads and does a good job of making writer/series creator Richard Warlow’s (Waking The Dead) complicated plot-lines very easy to understand. There are some obvious sources of inspiration to the show, especially the Robert Downey Jnr Sherlock Holmes movies, from the fiddle-based soundtrack to the stories involving newly emerging technologies.

But the show is of a far more adult nature than might be expected; the initial murder leaves some particularly violent wounds on the victim, and there is a lot of sex and nudity, with the introduction of Long Susan (MyAnna Buring) as the organiser of a local brothel and another leading character in the show ensuring that the adult themes of the first episode can be expected throughout the entire season.

If there is a major issue with this first episode, it’s that the "mystery" of the identity of the murderer is all too easy to solve, but thankfully the reasoning behind the murder is slightly more complex. On the plus side, the story does set up the beginnings of some intriguing bigger arcs that should have audiences coming back for more week after week.