I took the past week off from work, and spent it at home, “pottering,” as they say, though no pots were in fact potted. I expected to blog more than I did (sorry about that), but relaxation is a demanding discipline. I spent a lot of time watching English and Irish mystery series on Amazon Prime and Netflix. Descriptions follow.

I had intended to watch the modern cop series Whitechapel, which had been recommended to me, but after one episode I realized I’d started with the second season instead of the first, and the end of the first season had been spoiled. I decide to leave it for a while, until my memory of it fades, which my memories are wont to do.

So I turned, without high expectations, to a series set in the same neighborhood but a different age – Ripper Street, a BBC series about policemen working in the wake of the Jack the Ripper scare. Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew McFadyen) is an inspector recently returned to work after a steam ship accident in which his daughter was lost. Her body was never found, and he’s convinced she’s still alive, though he can’t find a clue as to her whereabouts. He’s assisted by Sgt. Bennett Drake (Jerome Flynn) a sort of Little John character, not especially bright but strong and brave, and soft at heart. Also an American doctor, Captain Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg), formerly of the Pinkertons, who serves as Inspector Reid’s forensic expert.

There’s a lot more action than you usually expect in a British mystery series – in fact you might call it an English western. There’s a lot of talk about the poverty of Whitechapel, and so some leftist themes come in, but they didn’t drive me away. I found it a lot of fun. Cautions for language, themes, and brief nudity.

Next I watched Single-Handed, an Irish series starring Owen McDonnell as Garda (police) officer Jack Driscoll. Jack, though young, is the chief officer in a small town on the Irish coast. As the series title suggests, he’s pretty much on his own in his job (except for an assistant who’s not the shiniest leaf on the shamrock), and his superiors generally prefer that he not worry them with his problems. His difficulties are increased by the fact that his predecessor in the job was his own father, with whom he has an ambivalent relationship. This is exacerbated as he learns that his father was corrupt – not in the self-enrichment sense, but in the sense of tipping the scales of the law in ways that pleased community opinion. It gets worse as he finds himself sometimes acting like his father, when right and wrong and legality get fouled up. The first episode reminded me of Greek tragedy in some ways.

Cautions for language and adult themes. But you’ll want to watch it just for the scenery, which is sometimes breathtaking, even on the small screen of my Kindle HD.

Finally, I watched another Irish series, Jack Taylor, about a grungy and alcoholic private detective (“finder”) in Galway, Ireland. Jack is played by a remarkable actor named Iain Glenn, owner of an amazing speaking voice. Unfortunately this voice is over-used in the first episode, where he does almost constant voice-over, and even breaks proscenium at one point, speaking directly to the audience. Fortunately this distraction was cut back greatly in the later episodes.

Jack, formerly a Garda officer, was kicked off the force and now divides his time between “finding things” for people and getting blind drunk. Nevertheless, like any handsome Irishman, he does well with the ladies. He also solves crimes, often related to changes in Irish society.

As the series goes on, Jack’s character gains depth. He tries, with limited success, to stop drinking. And he reaches out (also with limited success) to his cold, judgmental mother after she suffers a stroke. The longer I watched the series, the more I enjoyed it. Cautions for language and themes, as before. Some criticism of the church is in evidence, but is balanced by a continuing character who’s a “good” priest (you can tell he’s good because he smokes. Good priests in television and movies always smoke. It’s about the only vice we can forgive in priests).

And that’s how I spent my summer vacation.