Jack The Ripper, and everything surrounding the mystery, is fascinating.
The rampant speculation continues to this day. There are walking tours of Whitechapel to visit the macabre locations. The Ripper segment of the Chamber of Horrors reduced my overconfident 5 year old to a quivering mess. It might cost me in therapy at some stage.
The story itself has never been left alone for long. From Michael Caine and Jane Seymour in a mini-series, to dark comic adaptations like From Hell, the Ripper keeps returning.
He’s coming back again, as Oscar-winning Son of Saul filmmaker László Nemes is to co-write and direct the historical thriller limited series Sickert.
Oscar-nominated producer Alexander Rodnyansky (Leviathan) will produce and Adam Baroukh will co-write with Nemes.
The series will be set in a London gripped by panic over the murders, while German-British painter and artist Walter Sickert travels from his high society circles to the marginalised underclass whom he is drawn to paint.
When his subjects merge with the Ripper’s victims, he becomes a person of interest in the investigation, as his own grip on reality starts to fail.
Nemes says in a statement:
“My fascination for the first modern serial killer and for the mystery of the gothic world of Victorian London dates back to my childhood. I have the ambition to tell a story that is both epic and personal, frightening and illuminating, and to immerse today’s viewer in a universe that remains largely uncharted.”
Sickert’s work inspired Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud.
All this just makes me think it is about time I revisited From Hell.
