Was Walter Sickert merely an artist, or was he also a killer? László Nemes, the Oscar-winning director of Son of Saul, will co-write and direct Sickert, a historical thriller set in the world of Jack the Ripper, the enigmatic serial killer who, in 1888, operated in London’s dilapidated Whitechapel district in the East End. The miniseries, written with Adam Baroukh, will focus on the figure of the influential German-British painter and visual artist Walter Sickert, whom some historians and scholars suspect of being the infamous killer of the Victorian era.
Sickert: the Plot of the Miniseries About Jack the Ripper
Set in London in 1888, a city gripped by fear over the brutal murders of Jack the Ripper, Sickert follows the eponymous artist as he moves between two worlds: that of art and high society and that of the marginalized classes he loves to portray, the very people who fall victim to the killer. When Sickert lands on Scotland Yard’s radar, his grip on reality begins to falter, and the artist starts doubting his own innocence and his own identity.
“My fascination with the first modern serial killer and with the Gothic mystery of Victorian London goes back to my childhood,” Nemes stated. “I aspire to tell a story that is at once epic and intimate, frightening and revelatory, and to immerse today’s viewer in a universe largely unexplored.” The director added that he will base the show’s style on both historical documentaries and the haunting paintings created by the artist himself about life in the Whitechapel ghettos where Jack the Ripper chose his victims.
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