I enjoyed Alan Moore's original graphic novel. It is a gloomy, highly layer story with super art from Eddie Campbell. The heavy black and white ink makes it look like illustrations from a period newspaper or the cover of a penny dreadful (that was something before Showtime used the title; read a book kids).
The movie version is pretty good as well. It is no where near the quality of the graphic novel; however, it is still more entertaining than not. Of course, you have Heather Graham as an improbably hot 19th streetwalker and Johnny Depp as...uh...johnny Depp. It's pre-Pirates so he's not in Jack Sparrow mode yet. But, he's not that good in the film. There are some odd visual choices made by the Hughes Brothers that seem to be showy than designed to reinforce a central visual tone. However, Ian Holm is amazing as the killer. There are many scenes that capture how shitty late-19th Century London was. Robbie Coltrane is good as Depp's partner. I appreciate that the writers kept pretty close to the overall themes of the source materiel. I see it as a better than average horror/crime/period piece, although if you want to see a great Jack the Ripper movie, watch Murder By Decree, starring Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes.
I don't see how a series works. Apparently, it will focus on Jack. So, does anyone think we're going to get the Jack from the book (and movie); the elderly, deranged, high-ranking member of the Masons who is also the Physician-to-the-Queen? Or, do you think we're going to get "young" Jack the Ripper?
If this is literally a series length adaption of the events of the book, then it might work. The movie had to jettison a lot of interesting bits to come in under two hours. I could see From Hell as a mini-series or as a series with a limited number of seasons. So, If FX announces that From Hell will run for a season or two and follow the events of the book and not try to do some "edgy" reinterpretation of the characters or try to make Jack anything other than than lunatic fanatic or make him "young" Jack the Ripper or whatever the gods of TV thinks we want to see, then this is going to be horrible. but, hey, the executive producer, Don Murphy, is the guy who gave us the Transformer movies. So, I feel much better...wait, what? We. Are. Fucked.
Anyway, this has all the earmarks of a bad idea. I may be wrong. I hope I am. But, I have my doubts that FX will create a series about an elderly nut job fanatic who is murdering hookers to protect the Royal Family and, incidentally, mystically set the tone for the 20th Century.
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