Both shows are set in London.
Ripper Street features the Third Degree, ignorant brutes for police, filth everywhere, and men mostly unshaved for days.
Poirot cops are universally law-abiding, though Japp is primarily a foil for the little Belgian.
Everything and everyone is spotlessly clean, and even unfinished basements are free of dust and cobwebs and appear freshly whitewashed.
Even street people and tramps are perfectly shaved and clean, as are their clothes, always.
Why the difference?
Ripper Street is set in the last decade of the 19th Century.
Poirot is set between the two world wars.
Disposable blades for safety razors, making it technically and economically feasible for men to regularly shave themselves without having to master the dangerous use of a deadly weapon whose maintenance was tiresome, anyway, only became available in the early 1900s, and became popular thanks to King Camp Gillette's World War One US Army contract.
A fresh shave every day for men with or without mustaches or beards became the new normal.
Yes, I'm kidding.
But by no means entirely.
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