TV Review: Whitechapel is entertainment to die for
Whitechapel
ITV1, Monday 9pm
****
The first in this new three-part series of Whitechapel was bliss — the sort of high-gloss, sinister-silly crime caper that you want to settle down with of a Monday evening.
While real-world Whitechapel has long since been overrun by wazzocks in outsize spectacles and skinny jeans, ITV coaxes us to believe that it’s still the sort of place where villains in handmade shoes meet gruesome ends, and the boozers are full of sinister crims with extensive facial scarring.
In the first series, toff detective Rupert Penry-Jones and his crew of cockney coppers were chasing a Jack the Ripper tribute act. This time round it’s the Krays. God knows what they’ll do for the third: a ruthless killer working his way through Whitechapel’s butterfly population in the manner of Damien Hirst?
A lot has been learned from Red Riding, in the moody lighting and elegant camera work, but Whitechapel takes itself much less seriously. As
boggle-eyed conspiracy theorist and
confirmed virgin Edward Buchan (catchphrase: "I’m a detective in my soul!"), Steve Pemberton taps into the macabre camp of his roles in The League of Gentlemen, while Rupert Penry-Jones plays DI Chandler as a member of the Twenties officer class with his silver spoon wedged in the wrong end.
The Kray legend isn’t played for laughs, quite — it’s much more Kneecap Jack the Hat than Knees Ap Mavver Brahn — and there’s an enjoyable sense of violence and menace. But never far from the viewer’s mind are Monty Python’s Piranha Brothers, who nailed their victims’ heads to coffee tables. They weren’t far from the scriptwriters’ minds either.
Police to man affixed to billiard table by knife through hand: "Who put this knife through your hand?"
Man: "What knife?"
"You think this is a fair fight," growls Phil Davis’s splendid DS Miles at one point.
"This is a scrap — where the meanest, ’ardest bastard wins."
"You don’t know what I’m capable of," retorts Penry-Jones, striding off purposefully but sounding capable of nothing much more fearsome than coming second in the biscuit game.
Who’s going to be the killer? All to play for, but odds are shortening on Barbara Windsor, lawd lav ’er.
