In Review: Jekyll And Hyde – Spring Heeled Jack

Synopsis: Robert agrees to help the secretive MIO agency investigate a series of monster – related murders in return for Ravi’s freedom. However, Robert soon learns that the MIO are not to be trusted.

Review: Perhaps the strongest episode to date and all thanks to an alternate take on the myth behind Spring Heeled Jack.

Robert is taken in by the MIO who coerse him into helping them hunt down Spring Heeled Jack who has been murdering women throughout the London area and harvesting body parts. Richard E. Grant gets to put his manipulative hat on when he essentially strong arms Jekyll into working for him by only releasing his Jekylls step brother Ravi if Jekyll agrees to MIO’s terms.  I was a bit taken back that we didn’t see a bit more interaction between Hyde and MIO in this story.

Ravi who is now released and living with step brother Robert gets to lend a hand in the investigation, which Robert is trying to do as Hyde and suppressing Jekyll. This is a factor, which does not help Robert in his investigation when he visits Bella at the Empire. Bella is a little peeved at Robert turning up as the nice one and not Hyde who despite his crude behaviour gets the job done and protects the patrons of the bar from monsters.

The murders however turn out to be the work of a ancient bug, which inserts itself into human hosts in order to hunt and harvest body parts.  Hyde learns this by accident when he has a run in with the real Spring Heeled Jack, who is not a monster at all. More of a monster hunter in a rocketeer type outfit.

When Hyde wakes up as Robert he finds he has another person helping with the investigation in the form of  Spring Heeled Jack Burton. The great grandson of the original Spring Heeled Jack.

It’s fair to say that Roberts refusal to let Hyde out more through this episode proves more of a hindrance to the investigation as opposed to a help. The monster having seen off a police man winds up possessing one of Bella’s girls and makes its way to the Empire. By the time Robert arrives on the scene Bella is already engaged in a struggle with the monster and even when Jekyll intervenes he is not enough to keep it at bay.

The monsters is finally defeated to a point when Bella throws a bucket full of alcohol at it. Forcing the host body to retreat and the monster to leave. As Jekyll and Bella go to investigate the remains of one of her girls the ancient bug is no where to be seen. Until Spring Heeled Jack Burton turns up and gets taken over by the bug and then leaves the scene.

We next skip to a scene elsewhere where Spring Heeled Jack has turned up at the tenebre HQ to deliver the harvested body parts, which are to be used to revive the dead Captain Dance.

This was a really interesting episode in which we get an alternate look at Spring Heeled Jack mixed in with some Egyptian mythology for good measure.  I particularly enjoyed the scenes near the beginning when Jekyll is recruited into MIO and it was good to see Robert reunited with Ravi.

As ever the CGI was fantastically pulled off. I’m still impressed with the scenery of a 1930’s London and the costume work throughout this series thus far has been really good. In fact being a hat guy. I wouldn’t mind nabbing myself one of those trilby hats that Jekyll wears in the series.