Jack the Ripper

Jack the Ripper is a six-part BBC police procedural made in 1973, in which the case of the Jack the Ripper murders is reopened and analysed by Detective Chief Superintendents Barlow and Watt (Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor, respectively). These characters were hugely popular with UK TV viewers at the time from their appearances on the long-running police series Z-Cars and its sequels Softly, Softly and Barlow at Large. The programme was presented partly as a discussion between the two principals in the present day, interspersed with dramatised-documentary scenes set in the 19th century. The series discusses suspects and conspiracies, but concludes there is insufficient evidence to determine who was Jack the Ripper. The experiment was seen to be a success, and the formula was repeated in 1976 with Second Verdict, in which Barlow and Watt cast their gaze over miscarriages of justice and unsolved mysteries from the past.

Jack the Ripper was made available for syndication. It was first distributed by 20th Century-Fox Television, in cooperation with Metromedia.[7]

When televised in the United States, it featured Sebastian Cabot as host-narrator, and was broadcast variably using the title The Whitechapel Murders or the original Jack the Ripper.[8][9]

The series was also adapted into a book titled The Ripper File authored by series script writers Elwyn Jones and John Lloyd.[10] The 1979 film Murder by Decree, starring Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes investigating the Whitechapel murders, was based on The Ripper File.[11]