# The Ripper (2020)

> A four-part British true crime miniseries examining the Yorkshire Ripper murders through the testimony of those who lived through the hunt.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/94492

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 4
- Episode runtime: 50 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: documentary, crime
- Created by: Ellena Wood, Jesse Vile
- Network: Netflix
- Cast: Alan Whitehouse, Keith Hellawell, Bruce Jones, Jeremy Thompson, Christa Ackroyd, Mike Green, George Oldfield, Joan Smith
- TMDB rating: 7.1/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13492374/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: sober, tense, unsparing, dread-filled, somber

## What critics say

Audiences rate the miniseries as a mixed but serious documentary account of the Yorkshire Ripper case, with its archive-driven, testimony-based approach dividing opinion.

## Synopsis

The Ripper (2020) is a British true crime miniseries created by Ellena Wood and Jesse Vile for Netflix. Across four 50-minute episodes, it revisits the Yorkshire Ripper murders that haunted women in the North of England between 1975 and 1980, when thirteen women were killed and the police seemed unable to catch the offender. Rather than reenacting events, the series assembles testimony from people who stood at the center of the hunt, including a Yorkshire Post reporter, a Bradford superintendent, a Halifax Courier journalist, a forensic pathologist and a Sunday Times writer, alongside archive footage of the period. The engine of the story is the slow accumulation of institutional missteps and the atmosphere of suspicion that turned ordinary men into suspects and left women afraid to walk home. Each episode builds on the last, making this a single continuous account in a limited run. Its tone is sober, tense and unsparing, with a mood of dread and public anger. Its subject is violent and its interviews are blunt. Fans of The Staircase, Happy Valley and Making a Murderer will find resonance in its grounded, testimony-driven examination of a real crime and the failures around it.

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