Written by on Feb 7, 2012. Posted in On Location

BBC’s Ripper Street to double Dublin for period London with Irish Film Board help

New BBC TV dramas will be part-funded by the Irish Film Board (IFB) and will shoot on location in Ireland this year. Period drama Ripper Street will be the largest. It’ll be based in Dublin and is set in 1889 in the aftermath of the Jack the Ripper murder cases.

Element Pictures will produce Ripper Street locally. Dublin’s Clancy Quays will double for the East End of London in the late 19th Century, partly because the producers felt nothing currently available in modern London was suitable. The 19-week shoot will employ nearly 300 cast and crew.

Naoise Barry is Commissioner of the Irish Film Board: “They have based this BBC television drama series at a decommissioned army facility in Dublin city centre called Clancy Barracks. The barracks is on the banks (Quays) of the River Liffey, which runs through the heart of Dublin.

“Clancy Barracks functions as a makeshift film studio for Ripper Street. It provides production offices, a ‘back lot’ with a range of Georgian architecture that is doubling for period London, construction workshops, props stores and wardrobe facilities.”

Bollywood feature Ek Tha Tiger wrapped in Dublin before Christmas last year. The project benefitted from a tax incentive worth 28% of its total spend and is intended to pave the way for more Bollywood productions to choose Ireland as a filming location, as well as boosting the country’s film tourism.