Ripper Street Rip off

You may not realise this if you watched the first episode of the new series of Ripper Street on Friday (31st Aug) on BBC1 ...

... but when Amazon Prime Instant Video showed the same episode last year it contained a brief topless glimpse in the scene where Adam Rothenberg (as Captain Homer Jackson) and Lydia Wilson (as Mimi Morton) return to the bed after she has looked around his room trying to work out what he does for a living.  Even then it was only the briefest of marginal glimpses, but despite it being a mere blink-and-you'd miss it moment, BBC1 still didn't think we should be allowed to see it in case we were offended (presumably - although clearly they had no worries about people being offended by the blood and gore).

In order to excise the offending nipples, but not lose any dialogue, what they did was marginally re-frame (zoom-in) the shot thereby ensuring the problematic articles were kept out of view.

Here's the bit you missed ...

Lydia Wilson in Ripper Street

Cut it out BBC! (oh they have)
It has seemed for some time now as if BBC1 have an unspoken anti-(female)-nudity policy, particularly so in "scenes of a sexual nature" in which they do their utmost to make sure nothing revealing is on show.  There are occasional exceptions when female nudity is allowed (like Sheridan Smith in The C Word) but those vanishingly few occurrences all seem to have been moments of "natural nudity" which are not part of a sexual scene.

The petty edit made to Ripper Street, clearly done for no other purpose than to hide the nipples, seems to strongly reinforce that belief.

And maybe BBC2 is going the same sorry way given their track record with this year's offerings and especially how the initially promising seeming Life In Squares episode 1 clumsily went out of its way to avoid showing anything in its sex scenes, which only a few years ago would likely have been done "properly".  There are still two episodes to go of that drama (as this is written) so best reserve judgement until it's over.