BBC America’s Ripper Street Season 2 returns this Saturday, Feb. 22 at 10pm ET/PT with eight new episodes. This season finds the Metropolitan Police’s H Division battling new evils that threaten to disrupt the delicate peace struck at the end of Season 1. All the same characters are back, but the pairings have changed. It’s still 2-2-1, but this season, the “1” 
is Inspector Reid (Matthew MacFadyen, pictured). Joining the cast for Season 2 of Ripper Street is David Costabile (Breaking Bad), Damien Molony (Being Human), Joseph Malwe (Game of Thrones) and Leanne Best (Wire in the Blood).
Season 2 is quick to kick off, but doesn’t necessarily answer all of our immediate questions. (Episode 2, “Am I Not Monstrous?” on Saturday, March 1 will provide greater details on Reid’s wife leaving.)
“When we pick up with Reid he’s not longer with his wife, who has left home,” MacFadyen says. “They had a very traumatic end to the first series and he’d given her false hope that he’d found their missing daughter. It turned out it wasn’t her and so that was pretty hard for them both and their marriage dissolved. Anyway, he’s on his own and his house is a mess.”
Sergeant Drake (Jerome Flynn) is in a better place as he has found happiness with Bella, the young woman he saved from the trafficker Victor Silver. Captain Home Jackson (Adam Rothenberg) has also found domestic happiness with a re-commitment to his wife “Long” Susan Hart. He does, however, yearn for a new freedom.
MacFayden said there was plenty of great stuff to look forward to this season, including Joseph Merrick (The Elephant Man) making a return appearance. “We witness the beginning of Chinatown in the East End and the Triads make an appearance. You’ve got eugenics, which was a very strange branch of science which was popular for a while. There’s Fenian terrorism too — there were a lot of bombings.”
The first episode of Season 2 begins with Reid acting quickly when a sergeant from neighboring K Division is found hurled from a Whitechapel tenement window. An investigation leads to Chinatown, and a new character — K-Division’s Inspector Jedediah Shine (Mawle) — who claims his sergeant was a victim of a Triad turf war. When Jackson (Rothenberg) discovers a devastating, powerful new opiate, it leads Reid to fear that a worse kind of hell will soon be released onto the streets of Whitechapel.
If you need a Season 1 refresher, visit : http://www.bbcamerica.com/ripper-street/videos/season-1-catch-up-video/ for a 4-minute video that will catch you up.
Good news! On February 26, 2014 it was confirmed that Amazon Prime Instant Video revived Ripper Street and began filming new episodes in May of this year. From information on imdb.com there will be five episodes shown in 2014 and three in 2015. It was one of those instances where the viewers weren’t not going to let go quietly about Ripper Street.
I want to see Season 2 of Ripper Street. Please don’t cancel this fine show. I watch everything in the way of a British detective stories, mysteries, etc. They are so superior to our American television.
Sincerely
Maryalice Alexander
Attention, RIPPER STREET fans: the BBC has cancelled this show after only two seasons, before audiences outside of Britain even had a chance to see Season Two. You may help reverse this decision — visit change[dot]org…search RIPPER STREET and REVERSE THE BBC to sign the largest online petition to bring RIPPER STREET back. Nearly 40,000 viewers from inside and outside of the UK have signed already. Tweet them — @BBCOne @BBCAMERICA and @bbcpress and tell them to #SaveRipperStreet