Let’s play a game, close your eyes and imagine. Its 2am, you just ended your night out and are walking home. The street is poorly light and you are alone but it’s okay because you can already see your home in the distance. You hear steps behind you. Suddenly a sharp pain in the back of your head makes the floor closer than before and your vision darkens.
This is the story told and lived by the victims of the Yorkshire Ripper, the new Netflix true crime documentary series. Unlike other documentaries, The Ripper takes you to the scene. The viewer can feel the fear, anger and frustration of all angles and participants of the story in four bone-chilling episodes.
In her interview, director Ellena Wood states that The Ripper is not about the serial killer, it’s about women. The documentary brings the female perspective to a time where women were pushed back into captivity of a male dominated society. It tells the facts through interviews with the police officers that were involved in the case throughout the years and the journalists that wrote about it.
What fascinated me about this series is that, even though it does not tell you what to think, it quickly reveals the decisions made by the ones involved set the chain of events into an incredibly wrong path. If you are not a true-crime fan, I would still recommend you to watch this, because the murders are secondary to the vivid socio-political atmosphere in Yorkshire that is so well captured.
It is a brilliant History lesson on life in the North of England in the 70s that is often completely erased from public knowledge.
There are very clever anti-climatic moments, especially in the last two episodes when the story is coming to a close. It transmits the disappointment followed by gross negligence that the public felt when the murderer is found and later faces trial.
Overall this series brings a fresh perspective of the Yorkshire Ripper that in many ways has nothing in common with Jack The Ripper. It truly rips apart the sexist notions of murder and shows a much needed light on femicide, the real motive behind the society that birthed and nurtured the Ripper.
The Ripper: 4/5 – a definite must watch!
