New deal saves ‘Ripper Street’

Great news for fans of Ripper Street today (26th February), as Amazon and the BBC have teamed up to revive the period crime drama.

The show was axed by the BBC is December stating: “it didn’t bring the audience we hoped.” The new deal will see a third, 8-part series premiere online on Amazon’s subscription service Prime Instant Video, with BBC One airing the series several months later.

Made by Tiger Aspect, the 19th century Whitechapel-set drama stars, Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn and Adam Rothenberg, and will again be co-produced by BBC America.

Jason Ropell, head of Amazon instant video international content acquisition, said: ” We’re delighted to have secured not only the highly popular first two seasons of Ripper Street for our Prime Instant Video customers, but we can also confirm today that we will making season three, news that we know will delight the millions of fans of this brilliant British drama.”

Tiger Aspect head of drama Will Gould said: “It’s the third series that we had always hoped to make.”

BBC controller of drama commissioning Ben Stephenson added: “This is an exceptional opportunity to bring back Ripper Street for a third series by working with the right partners. This deal gives fans another series of the show they love at excellent value to the licence fee payer, ensuring that the BBC can also commission an entirely new, yet to be announced drama series.”

Ripper Street will begin filming in the UK for the first time in May (series 1 and 2 were both filmed in Ireland).