Joseph Chandler
Played By: Rupert Penry-Jones
- Ambiguously Bi: He's only ever shown to be interested in women, but his team to make a point of telling him they'd be ok if he was interested in men, he is portrayed as having certain camp characteristics, and Kent has a pretty severe crush on him
- Broken Ace: He's from a good background, well educated, and well dress. He also has sometimes crippling OCD, and a constant need to prove himself.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Despite his OCD obsession with cleanliness, he's good at what he does.
- Character Development
- Dark and Troubled Past: His father killed himself when he was a kid. Chandlers mother never really got over it, and turned to psychics and seances to deal with it.
- Deadpan Snarker: He certainly has his moments.
- Defective Detective
- Fire-Forged Friends: With Miles and, to a lesser extent, the team.
- Holy Backlight: Gets one in the final episode, in keeping with the allusions to a sort of holy war in the area. Possibly hinting that Chandler may be an Angel Unaware, though YMMV.
- I Just Want to Be Special: He just wants to solve interesting cases.
- Naïve Newcomer
- Neat Freak
- Oblivious to Love: Doesn't seem to realise that Kent has a pretty big crush on him.
- Is generally pretty oblivious when people are interest in him.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: He wears suits from Savile Row.
Ray Miles
Played By: Phil Davis
- Old-Fashioned Copper
- Deadpan Snarker
- Fire-Forged Friends: With Chandler
- The Matchmaker: On at least two separate occasions he tries to hook Joe up with a colleague.
- Papa Wolf / Big Brother Instinct: Shows signs of both towards Chandler.
- Parental Abandonment / Parental Issues: His father, who was in the pocket of the Kray brothers but was treated like a joke by them, left him and his mom. Actually, he was killed because he refused to let them touch Ray.
Edward Buchan
Played By: Steve Pemberton
"I will be like Atlas, carrying the weight of the investigation..."
- Amateur Sleuth: And the real detectives don't let him forget the "amateur" part.
- Manchild: Not an extreme case, but it fits.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Reacts like this in series 1 when he realises he's accidentally given advice to the Jack the Ripoff killer and again in series 3 when he feels like he could have done more to help the team.
Commander Anderson
Played By: Alex Jennings
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Magnificent Bastard: He and Double Agent Jack use Chandler and his team to depose the fake Krays, creating a power vacuum that he can then fill.
Emerson Kent
Played By: Sam Stockman
- Ambiguously Gay: His interest in Chandler is very subtle, but clearly romantic. He doesn't seem to have any other romantic interests in the series.
- Big Brother Mentor: Every member of the team tries to take this role for him to varying degrees. Hilariously, the one he seems to latch onto is Chandler, resulting in a very organized desk.
- Break the Cutie: Subverted. He's adorable and sensitive, and in the second season, he is harassed by most of the corrupt cops in the station, gets attacked and cut up with a knife, is harassed and threatened some more, is suspected of being The Mole by people he admires and trusts and is thrown off the team, and breaks down crying in the parking lot. This fails to break him, and when the team cracks the case, he's front of the line to cuff the culprits.
- As the series progresses however, it’s hinted that the pressures of the dark nature of the job have started to affect him. See Corrupt the Cutie.
- Can't Hold His Liquor: Is nearly always the first to get giggly/pass out during team outings.
- Corrupt the Cutie: Towards the end of the series, Kent shows signs of becoming quiet sinister. He certainly seems able to turn on the creep factor.
- The therapist in season 3 even alludes to this fact, saying that Kent may be more built to be the Bad Cop than he'd like to think
- Half Identical Twin
- Green-Eyed Monster: To all of Chandler's love interests in S3, and the platonic version towards Mansell in S4 over Mansell's relationship with his sister
- Ignored Enamored Underling: Kent could be the page image
- Odd Friendship: With Mansel in series 4, despite their differences.
- Red Herring Mole
- Puppydog Eyes: Of the brown eyed variety
- Sharp-Dressed Man: Although not as expensively dressed as Chandler, his off the rack suits certainly look the part.
- Straight Gay: Unrequited attraction to Chandler.
- Tender Tears: He deals with particularly bad cases by having a cry in the parking lot where he thinks nobody can see him. Men Don't Cry is averted because though the whole team knows, nobody thinks less of him for it.
John McCormack
Played By: George Rossi
- Driven to Suicide: McCormack hangs himself rather than having the police arrest him for betraying his fellow officers.
- An Offer You Can't Refuse: The Krays threaten his family to force him to betray the team.
Fitzgerald
Played By: Christopher Fulford
- Face–Heel Turn: After being booted of the team in Series 1 for being The Mole, he returns in Series 2 as one of the uniformed officers who is working for the Kray’s against the team.
- The Lancer: Originally to Miles.
- The Mole: Rats the team out to the press in Series 1. Due to this, he was demoted as revealed in Series 2.
Finlay Mansell
Played By: Ben Bishop
- Ladykiller in Love: Ladykiller may be pushing it, but he's had many girlfriends (and at least one wife) who he has cheated on. So when Erica Kent dumps him, he is distraught because he genuinely remained loving and faithful to her.
- Jerkass: Constantly winds Kent up about dating his sister and sends a fake email from Meg leading Ed to believe she has feelings for him.
- Remember the New Guy?: An old friend of the team and especially McCormack, only neither we nor Chandler recognize him.
- Odd Friendship: With DC Riley. Seemed to have failed when she finds out he's cheating. But series 4 shows them still going strong. Until Mansell fakes a romantic letter to Buchnan from Riley
- With Kent in series 4, despite their differences.
Megan Riley
Played By: Hannah Walters
- The Heart: She's the one usually seen offering comfort to the victims.
- Team Mom
- Mama Bear
- Odd Friendship: Has one with Mansell of all people. At least until she discovers he's cheating on his wife. But series 4 shows them still going strong. Until Mansell fakes a romantic letter to Buchnan from Riley
- One of the Boys: Explictly stated to be this in series 3 and by her actress.
Louise Iver
- Big Bad: Takes on this role in series four as it is made apparent she is behind the grisly crimes in Whitechapel and begins to torment the main characters.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Revealed to be this for the whole series, as she was the mastermind behind the crimes the main characters investigated in previous series.
- Louis Cypher
- Karma Houdini: Has never faced any proper repercussions for the grisly crimes she has helped create over the centuries, and it is unlikely this will ever change.
- Our Demons Are Different
"Jack The Ripper" Real name unknown
- Bald of Evil: Has a set of different wigs and fake facial hair to imitate various suspects from the original killings; to help with this (and to make sure he leaves no evidence) he has no actual hair on his body, not even eyebrows.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Works as a doctor and slips completely under the radar, even helping with the case
- Born Lucky: He is absurdly lucky in his killings, at one point he manages to get away with dumping a body right in front of police camera's because every single one of them just happened to be watching a false lead.
- Jack the Ripoff: The killers entire motif, he has spent untold years being completely obsessed with Jack the ripper and goes through absurd levels of effort to copy him.
- The Spook: He has gone to extreme lengths to hide his identity, he is revealed to have several birth certificates, passports, drivers licences and even national insurance numbers. All of them are probably fake, nobody knows who he is and after he fails to kill the final victim he sinks himself in the River Thames in an attempt to try and destroy his own body and he's never found.
