If Scotland Yard had ever captured Jack the Ripper back in the 19th century, the British TV industry would be scrambling for ideas for new shows.

The notorious killing spree has spawned countless films and TV shows over the years. And if the Brits aren’t making a specific show about the unknown slayer of prostitutes in Whitechapel, they’re making series that name-check the Ripper murders. Sometimes they give the shows names like “Whitechapel.” This year’s model? “Ripper Street,” an eight-episode series premiering Saturday on BBC America.

What’s next, “Little Jackie Ripper: The Early Years?”

“Ripper Street” is a decent but not especially remarkable thriller about crime solving in Whitechapel immediately following Jack’s reign of terror. The killings seem to have stopped, but the cops and Whitechapel residents are jumpy, as well they should be, since, as we know, the Ripper was never caught.

Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen, “Pride and Prejudice”), his sergeant, Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn, “Game of Thrones”) and Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg, “Alcatraz”), a randy Yank with a fondness for booze and the working girls of Long Susan Hart’s (MyAnna Buring) brothel, go into action when the body of a young woman is found in a Whitechapel alley with her throat slit and crosses cut into her eyelids.

At first, the neighborhood is convinced the Ripper has come out of hiding, but Reid has his doubts, which are confirmed by Jackson’s forensic skills (he was an Army surgeon back in the States).

So if the girl wasn’t murdered by the Ripper, who, as it were, dunnit?

As in the original BBC America production “Copper,” which is set in New York in the 1860’s, early forensic science plays a key role in helping Reid and his team solve crimes. In “Copper,” Kevin Corcoran (Tom Weston-Jones) enlists the help of a freed slave who is also a doctor, Matthew Freeman (Ato Asandoh), to solve crimes. Here, Reid dragoons Jackson to work on murder cases with him.

The similarities between the two shows don’t end there. Corcoran is haunted by the murder of his young daughter, while Reid and his wife, Emily (Amanda Hale), have lost their young daughter as well. Each show also features a cooperative brothel owner, grittily detailed production values and florid, penny-dreadful dialogue.

By the second episode, show creator Richard Warlow (“Mistresses”) is borrowing a bit of Charles Dickens in the story of a street urchin convicted of murdering an elderly toy maker and sentenced to die on the gallows in three days. The boy is one of a group of street kids in the employ a Fagin-like character, who’s really much more of a Bill Sikes and out to spring the boy so he can shut him up before he tells the authorities too much. Meanwhile, Reid and his team have to keep the rabid citizen Whitechapel Vigilance Committee from shortstopping the kid’s trip to the gallows.

Although each episode focuses on a particular crime, we’re hooked as much by the characters and what we still don’t know about them.

Edmund and Emily have a strained marriage, although they both seem to love each other. He buries the grief he feels for his daughter’s loss in his work, while she spends every waking hour in church. Homer and Long Susan have both turned up in London after escaping some yet-to-be-defined incident back in the United States, which may have involved a name and identity change for Jackson. He can be an invaluable asset to Reid on a murder case, but he’s not to be trusted.

“Ripper Street” boasts superb performances, cast and production values, and, beyond the copycat elements, thoughtfully written scripts, loaded with surprises and a compellingly complicated moral base: Virtually all the characters are a credible mix of strengths and flaws.

There’s nothing terribly original in any of this, but if you go looking for original thinking in any TV series, whether it’s made in the United States or the United Kingdom, you’re quite likely to be disappointed.