The Telegraph has an article discussing the first episode of Ripper Street.  Be sure to read the full article but here are some of the highlights:

The first episode is especially gruesome and sordid, exploring the very beginnings of pornography, which arrived hot on the heels of the first cameras.

and

....this is not the comparatively polite, Dickens-esq world of Victorian London. “All the period depictions I’d seen of that particular crime story had almost been a bit too well behaved in a slightly slower way and shots have to be a bit wider to show off the nice furniture,” says director Tom Shankland. “But if you can think of something awful [in Victorian London], it was happening.”

While Matthew Macfadyen had this to say about his character

The character of Edmund Reid is based on a policeman who was part of the Ripper investigations, but only in name. “He was a remarkable man but I didn’t base it on him. He was a balloonist, and a druid, and 5 ft 6,” says Macfadyen. “The police would have felt incredibly modern at the time, in many ways they were stumbling around a bit, before scientific advancement, fingerprints and forensics.”

Ripper Street has already been sold in Canada, Norway and Australia ahead of MIPCOM.  Ripper Street will be airing on BBC One later this year.