The East End has been the setting for many TV and Films over the years. Most, predictably, concentrate on the crime and deprivation that was so prevalent in the area throughout the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries. Numerous films have featured Jack the Ripper as their central character, with films such as ‘From Hell’ – starring Johnny Depp as Inspector Abberline and Heather Graham as the ‘love interest’ being a more unusual twist on the ‘slasher’ movie genre. TV Series such as Ripper Street carry on in this vein (sorry) – while The Krays and Whitechapel move the East End action well into the twentieth and twenty first centuries.
Popular soap opera ‘EastEnders’ ensures that the spirit of the East End is continued with its storylines of day to day folk doing unusual things!
To read a bit more about these and other East End TV and Films, click on the links below….
RIPPER STREET
Ripper Street was a BBC Television series set in Leman Street Police Station, Whitechapel in London’s East End in 1889. The initial story takes place just six months after the infamous Jack the Ripper murders (more)
WHITECHAPEL
Whitechapel, the TV series (a Carnival Films production) was set in 2008 and centres on a group of detectives in London’s Whitechapel district who find themselves dealing with murders which replicate historical crimes (more)
FROM HELL
There have been numerous films based, albeit loosely, on the ‘career’ of the East End’s most infamous son, Jack the Ripper. ‘From Hell’, based on a graphic novel of the same name – is but one, and sees a relationship between Inspector Abberline and (more)
THE KRAYS (1990)
“The Krays”, was a 1990 film based around the lives of two of the East End’s most infamous sons, Ronnie and Reggie Kray. Written by Philip Ridley and produced by Hungarian born filmmaker Peter Medak, the film starred real life brothers Gary and Martin Kemp (more)
JACK THE RIPPER (1988 MINI-SERIES)
The 1988 mini-series ‘Jack the Ripper’ was broadcast on the 100th anniversary of the terrible murders in Whitechapel, and starred Michael Caine as Inspector Frederick Abberline and Lewis Collins as Sergeant George Godley tasked with finding the killer (more)