I have been very excited since I heard the news last year that Ripper Street would be having a third series made, it is an excellent Victorian police drama and despite being put up against popular reality shows like I’m a Celebrity & Britain’s Got Talent it still managed to gain very respectable viewing numbers.

The one thing I dislike about the show however is their trait of making sweeping changes to the characters before the first episode of the series has aired. For example when the first episode of series two aired we discovered that Inspector Reid’s wife had left him and Sargent Drake had married someone who was not the woman he spent the entire first series courting.

It gets even more perplexing in the first episode of the third series when we find out that Captain Jackson has been fired from his job as a police surgeon, Sargent Drake has joined the Manchester police force and has risen to the rank of Inspector, Inspector Reid’s wife has died, Long Susan is now a very wealthy businesswoman and is setting up free clinics and gentrifying Whitechapel, and Rose Erskine (former prostitute) is now a very successful singer and a big celebrity.

Maybe that was the idea the writers had in mind when they originally came up with the show? Because I have found that I need to watch episodes a couple of times just to get my head around all the changes that have happened while the show has been off the screen.