Interview with Tom Shankland

January 31, 2013.

Tom Shankland, director of BBC One’s new hit drama, Ripper Street, talks to Roberto Oliveri about Jack the Ripper, murder and the art of horror.

R.O: Tell me about Ripper Street.

T.S: In a very unbiased way, I’m very proud of it. I think it’s one of the few things I’ve made that I’d watch again without wishing I’d done something differently. I watched the second episode again the other night and I completely surrendered to it.

R.O: That’s quite an accomplishment. How did the project come about?

T.S: It started out with the Richard Warlow script. I hadn’t read anything like it before, about the late Victorian period, with such a strong combination of visceral action and rich characterisation. I really enjoyed its florid language, which reminded me of Deadwood (an American television series set in the Wild West). It was just very intelligent and grown up and just great entertainment on the page. I had to direct it.

R.O: I read some reviews. Most praised it, but you had some, those with an overdeveloped sense of propriety, who were outraged by its gore and gruesomeness. What else should they expect from a period crime drama?

T.S: There were certain individuals who thought it misogynistic and offensive. And I took issue with that. It’s important to make a distinction between an exploration of a misogynistic era and killer and misogynistic imagery. Like Edmund Reid, we – the camera – are always on the side of good people trying to survive in hard times. It just happens that some of the predators in our world are exploiting vulnerable women. That doesn’t mean we’re siding with the predators in their attitudes. In fact, we take great pleasure in punishing them! Our vision of Whitechapel is a bit like the Wild West: women are murdered, but so are men. In Ripper Street both women and men are victims. The first episode showed women being mistreated and murdered, but in Episode Two, men are shown being beaten to death. We cast these fantastic, strong, interesting actresses, who go on big journeys over the eight episodes. I felt that there was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the sex and violence of the first episode and because of that it was labelled misogynistic. However, a bit of controversy never hurts.

R.O: It’s called Ripper Street and it’s directed by Tom Shankland. I hope they don’t go to see Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained expecting a romcom.

T.S (laughs): I’ve murdered children, pets. I kill everything on screen.

R.O: It has been mentioned that we’re obsessed with the Jack the Ripper story. Do you agree? Or is it just an obsession with the Victorian period in general?

T.S: Victorian Britain is endlessly fascinating. If the twentieth century is remembered as the American century, then the nineteenth is the British century. This was a century of industry, economic growth, of sexual repression, the birth of modern values. I think what’s amazing about the Ripper story is partly that it shows the dark, twisted underside. The crimes were brutal and they exposed a world of poverty, exploitation and prostitution. Throw into this the fact that this guy was never caught, so we can project whatever we want onto that murderer, that monster. If he’d been caught, if he’d been psychoanalysed, if there had been a trial, we’d have learned how ordinary he was. But none of this happened and as a result, he’s rather mythical. He operates as a figure of terror from the unconsciousness of that city, that time. He’s an emblem of evil.

R.O: It is a popular story. How does Ripper Street differ from what’s already been offered?

T.S: It’s more about the characters, such as Matthew Macfayden’s Edmund Reid, and the way in which they reacted to this violence. There was an intelligence and a sense of humanity that appealed to me in Richard’s script and I liked the way in which he used violence to explore big themes. It’s not just about Jack the Ripper but about the aftermath. Life goes on. Ripper Street reminded me of David Fincher’s Zodiac, a film about a killer who was never discovered. It’s about the journalists investigating the crimes and how they were affected, how they took it home with them, how it informed what they did next and also how they moved on from it. Ripper Street was exactly like that in that Jack the Ripper is not the beginning, middle and end of Ripper Street. It’s the inciting incident. Our story begins a few months after his crimes and is about these characters and their relationships in connection to the crimes. I tried to explore different themes, such as vigilantism, the way in which the police tried to increase their authority on the streets of London. That I deal with the characters, such as Reid, instead of the Ripper, is the central difference.

R.O: Traditional storytelling dictates that a protagonist, having overcome several obstacles, achieves what he desires. If there’s no Ripper, there’s no gratification for Reid and, by extension, the audience, which supports his endeavour. How do you compensate for such a lack of resolution?

T.S: The way Richard wrote the script was very clever. You could compare the character of Edmund Reid to Frederick Abberline, who was in charge of a lot of the Ripper murders. Abberline will never get over that failure, but Reid is more pragmatic. He had the ability to be an observer. He had some perspective on what was going on. His place was H divison, Whitechapel, Abberline came from Scotland Yard. Reid had lots of crimes to deal with and solve, which allowed him to have a certain perspective on the Ripper murders. It became a challenge for him to become a better detective. It wasn’t a personal cross, on which he’d die. It was a failure that he’d learn from.

R.O: It’s not so much about the pay-off as the actual journey.

T.S: Yes, exactly. Zodiac for me was an important reference.

R.O: How do you see Ripper Street in relation to other period dramas such as, say, Downton Abbey? Do you object to people calling Ripper Street “Downton Abbey with gore?”

T.S (smiles): I don’t see them as the same animal. And that’s because they’re different genres. It tickles me that it’s in the same slot: 9 o’clock on a Sunday. It’s chalk and cheese.

R.O: Apparently the blood in Ripper Street is more realistic than the blood in Downton Abbey (resulting from Matthew Crawley’s sticky end in a car crash), which was described by a sagacious and much esteemed commentator as “raspberry jam.”

T.S laughs.

R.O: I think that’s a compliment.

T.S: I like to get the colour and consistency right. I do my research.

R.O: History intrigues us – characters in period dramas are mirrors in which we see ourselves. What are we to take from Ripper Street? How are we to connect to it?

T.S: I think that every script had something to say about where current obsessions began. Episode One is about the birth of cinema. Even then, violence and sex were part of the entertainment value of cinema. We live in a world where pornography is ubiquitous and violence has been a constant part of cinema for the last 100 years. I wanted to know how it all began. Creating a weird origin story about the snuff movie in Whitechapel, for me, was fascinating. You can relate to it. Episode Two is about gangs. It’s about hoodies in 1889. It explores the psychology of how a society interprets and handles violence by children – whether we can blame them or not. It’s a theme that obsesses journalists, politicians and society at large.

R.O: It may be gruesome, gory and objectionable, as some have claimed, but it certainly engages with universal, timeless themes. On the surface it’s blood and senseless actions, but really it’s a drama, in which relevant dilemmas and questions are posed.

T.S: That’s right.

R.O: Speaking of the snuff movie and its origins, I thought it was odd how Reid and his team burst in to save Rose, a prostitute being choked by an aristocrat, and suddenly admire the camera being used. Some might say this appreciation of technical advancement at that particular moment belittles what happened to Rose.

T.S (laughs): I think it’s a wonderful moment. As a detective he’s fascinated by modernity. He’s not defined by a failure to catch the Ripper, but by a desire to be a better detective, to discover more about a world in flux. In that moment, Reid can see the whole crime, which isn’t just what’s happening to the women, but the bizarre thing that it will be recorded and seen again.

R.O: It’s the idea of reconstruction, of perpetuating a crime.

T.S: Yes. In 1889, it’s a mind-blowing concept, akin to if we were to discover time travel. Rose, the victim, when she sees the camera, is lost in astonishment, even though she knows she’s afraid. Reid saved the woman, he’s fulfilled his duty, and so it’s plausible that at that point he’d be taken aback by this invention.

R.O: TV dramas are incredibly popular at the moment. You’re a director, successful in both TV and film. How does your understanding of the latter inform the former?

T.S: Increasingly, TV scripts are becoming more cinematic. Whenever I go into doing a TV production, I think: how can I intrigue the audience. I tend to approach both media in a similar way. What’s great about doing a film is that you’re involved with it for a much longer period, which allows you to think about the details more intensively. With TV, by the time you’re involved as a director, there’s less time to think about these details. You really have to think on your feet. On a basic level, TVs are getting bigger, so I can use a cinematic language in TV productions.

R.O. I watched The Children a few years ago, which was also seen as gory by critics. But actually it’s a drama as much as a horror. It asks very serious questions, one of which is: is it morally right to kill my murderous child? In it violence is used as a means to an end. Similarly, Ripper Street uses blood and brutality to explore serious issues.

T.S. Exactly. I wouldn’t be interested in directing a project that didn’t tackle those big issues. It’s interesting that in a place like South Korea, their horror cinema is their art cinema. There isn’t a hierarchy. Britain is obsessed with hierarchy. Horror or violent dramas are always low on people’s list of noble art forms. In other countries that’s not the case. You get shallow dramas and very rich, intellectually challenging horror films.