Cor blimey. East London, 1889, ain't no place for no shrinking violet. Well, not according to Ripper Street (BBC1, Sunday). The men are all at the fight (bare–knuckle, naturally) and the women are all on the game, even though it's only a few months since the horribly mutilated body of Jack the Ripper's last victim was found. Suspicion, rumour and terror run in the gutters, along with all the usual Victorian filth.

Then there's blood in the gutters, too. Another body, another young woman, with the Ripper's calling card slices. Is it him – is Jack back?

Sensible, handsome Detective Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) isn't so sure. He's not jumping to any conclusions, nor ruling anything out, just going about the investigation in the methodical, pragmatic way he would any other, pinning photos and stuff up on the blackboard (that's what the police used is it, before they got those transparent screens modern TV detectives have?). Reid calls on a seedy American pal, a former Pinkerton detective who has the combined talents of Grissom and Holmes, for a bit of help with the forensics and the logical reasoning.

The public, of course, already think they know whodunnit, and an angry mob marauds the streets, baying for revenge and more blood. They are spurred on by wicked journalists who will go to any lengths – including falsifying evidence (and most probably tapping that telegraph machine, too) – in order to keep a good story going, and papers flying off the newsstands. I see, so the boys in blue may not be angels, exactly, but the real villains here, the absolute bottom of the bottom, no better than the filth in those gutters, are … the press. Who wrote this, Lord Justice Leveson? No? Richard Warlow is it? Well, that's probably his pen name.

Turns out the Ripper's not to blame, but an evil pornography ring (as opposed to those really lovely pornography rings), headed up by a posh-boy pervert-in-chief. The cine camera's only been invented five minutes and it's already being put to despicable use. Not just pornography either, but snuff movies.

It would be easy to be negative about Ripper Street. Do we really need more on a story that's been not just done to death, but then carved up, and had its insides torn out? Why this obsession? You could also be cynical about it more specifically as television. It's manufactured, a hybrid, televisual eugenics: take beautiful period drama, then sex up, literally, with sex; and darken, with nasty dark sex; add CSI, Waking the Dead, Sherlock, a touch of Life on Mars, Garrow's Law … anything that's been done well recently. Perhaps in the next episode there will be a phone vote to decide who goes to the gallows.

But, on the first point, this isn't really about Jack the Ripper – not so far, anyway. It's about the aftermath, it's about a time and a place and a feeling, it's about the police, and the press, and the people, and it's actually about that obsession. And on the other: well, maybe it is a cocktail – but it's a bloody good cocktail. Warlow's/Leveson's script is real, alive and human. It's beautifully performed, and beautiful to look at – stylish, and stylised. The bare-knuckle fight scenes are brutal and memorable. It's proper, character-based crime drama, gripping, and yes – I'm afraid – ripping as well.

It's a shame it clashed with Neil Armstrong – First Man on the Moon (BBC2, Sunday). Here's another story you might feel there's not a massive amount left to say about. But it's not a bad story. And this is not so much about that trip he took, and that step, but about the man himself, told by the people who knew him best (ex-wives, siblings, childhood buddies, as well as Buzz and Michael of course). It turns out Neil didn't come up with that line on the spur of the moment after all – he practised it on his brother weeks earlier. Bloody liar.

Just one complaint. The film never even questions whether he told a much much bigger lie and that he never went anywhere … yeah, shut up.

Real life Fawlty Towers fly-in-the-soup doco The Hotel (Channel 4, Sunday) is back for a third series, with some entertaining new guests. My favourites are jet-skier Gary and Rachel from the West Midlands, who are trying for a second child. "Mummy's going to do a wee on a stick" is a good line however you say it, but when mummy – and daddy – are brummies, it's gorgeous.