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If anyone isn’t familiar with this series it’s presented by Lawrence Fishburne and deals with one mystery per week. They’re certainly worth watching as a series but I was certainly disappointed with the ripper episode which I watched last night followed by an interesting episode on the Voynich Manuscript.
Its easy for us who’ve been interested in the case for years to nitpick of course but any suggestion that the programme was well researched pretty much flew out of the window when the ‘experts’ claimed that Stride and Eddowes both had their throats cut and were horribly mutilated! Not a great start. Then we got an ‘expert’ who appeared to be unable to pronounce ‘Kosminski.’ Of the ‘expert’ commentators I was only familiar with Mike Hawley and there was no issue with his short segments but it was perhaps strange that when they got around to suspects Tumblety didn’t get a mention. It was also strange that part way through the show, another ‘expert’ (the one who couldn’t pronounce Kosminski’) also became captioned as Mike Hawley. How could the editors not have noticed that 2 consecutive contributors were apparently called Mike Hawley?
Strangely when they got to suspects they mentioned the Memorandum but only mentioned Kosminski and Ostrog (plus Martin Fido’s suggestion about David Cohen.) So no mention of Druitt. Also there was no mention of Bury, Tumblety, Kelly or Lechmere (although George Chapman was mentioned.)
Then we had the desperate and baselessly over-confident Jeff Mudgett on H.H.Holmes. Finally Trevor got a mention with Feigenbaum (although no appearance from Trevor himself apart from a photo.) His suggestion was considered respectfully.
So another waste of time in my opinion. How many of these types of poorly researched and poorly thought out documentaries can be made? It appears that the answer is ‘an endless number.’ It would be good to see a properly researched documentary for a change with people who have researched the case for years and know the subject. There’s nothing wrong with using general crime experts, psychologists etc of course but not when they appear to have no real knowledge of this specific case. If I was doing such a documentary I’d give 5 minutes each for researcher/theorist to make their case, so I’d have for example Rob House or Steve Blomer on Kosminski, Mike Hawley on Tumblety, Fish or Ed Stow on Lechmere, Stephen Senise on Hutchinson, Jon Hainsworth or David Anderson on Druitt, perhaps Ike on Maybrick, perhaps Bill Beadle on Bury, Tully on Kelly, Tracey l’Anson on Levy and Trevor on Feigenbaum to name 10 of the most widely considered suspects.
I might have a long and futile wait though.
Its easy for us who’ve been interested in the case for years to nitpick of course but any suggestion that the programme was well researched pretty much flew out of the window when the ‘experts’ claimed that Stride and Eddowes both had their throats cut and were horribly mutilated! Not a great start. Then we got an ‘expert’ who appeared to be unable to pronounce ‘Kosminski.’ Of the ‘expert’ commentators I was only familiar with Mike Hawley and there was no issue with his short segments but it was perhaps strange that when they got around to suspects Tumblety didn’t get a mention. It was also strange that part way through the show, another ‘expert’ (the one who couldn’t pronounce Kosminski’) also became captioned as Mike Hawley. How could the editors not have noticed that 2 consecutive contributors were apparently called Mike Hawley?
Strangely when they got to suspects they mentioned the Memorandum but only mentioned Kosminski and Ostrog (plus Martin Fido’s suggestion about David Cohen.) So no mention of Druitt. Also there was no mention of Bury, Tumblety, Kelly or Lechmere (although George Chapman was mentioned.)
Then we had the desperate and baselessly over-confident Jeff Mudgett on H.H.Holmes. Finally Trevor got a mention with Feigenbaum (although no appearance from Trevor himself apart from a photo.) His suggestion was considered respectfully.
So another waste of time in my opinion. How many of these types of poorly researched and poorly thought out documentaries can be made? It appears that the answer is ‘an endless number.’ It would be good to see a properly researched documentary for a change with people who have researched the case for years and know the subject. There’s nothing wrong with using general crime experts, psychologists etc of course but not when they appear to have no real knowledge of this specific case. If I was doing such a documentary I’d give 5 minutes each for researcher/theorist to make their case, so I’d have for example Rob House or Steve Blomer on Kosminski, Mike Hawley on Tumblety, Fish or Ed Stow on Lechmere, Stephen Senise on Hutchinson, Jon Hainsworth or David Anderson on Druitt, perhaps Ike on Maybrick, perhaps Bill Beadle on Bury, Tully on Kelly, Tracey l’Anson on Levy and Trevor on Feigenbaum to name 10 of the most widely considered suspects.
I might have a long and futile wait though.
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