Ripper Street has been cancelled. What is the BBC thinking?

Ripper Street: 'a huge and detailed etching of Victorian London life'. Photograph: Steffan Hill/BBC/Tiger Aspect

Dreadful news for fans of quality drama today, as the BBC has officially killed off its superior Victorian crime drama Ripper Street. "The second series didn't bring the audience we hoped and in order to make room for creative renewal and new ideas it won't be returning," a spokesman told the website Digital Spy.

Some might question the BBC's wisdom in putting one of the finest period dramas it has produced in a decade up against a ratings juggernaut such as ITV's I'm A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here. But Inspector Reid (played by Matthew MacFadyen) and his motley band of crime-stoppers at Division H will be no more in 14 days time. Viewing figures for Last Tango in Halifax, another jewel in BBC1's crown, are also suffering as a result of ITV's jungle antics. l.

The first episode of Ripper Street met a mixed reaction. Some said they didn't want to see yet another drama about women being brutally murdered but others (me included) were agog at the skilful agility of the writing and the incredible attention to detail. However, Ripper Street was so much more than that. The story did begin with the tail-end of Jack the Ripper's terrifying reign, but it went on to examine complex human motivations, to scrutinise the central characters and their lives beyond the police station and to cut through to the guts of what it means to be evil and/or human. And it did this while looking truly stunning. When direction, writing and acting come together in such unison, surely a broadcaster would fight to keep that band together. It seems madness to pull the chain on something so clearly, cohesively brilliant.

The procedural elements traced the beginnings of forensic detection and kept pathology geeks well-fed. Writers tirelessly wove in historical detail, like the arrival of moving pictures and the first steam underground trains, to create imaginative plots and unexpected twists. In one episode, the Elephant Man himself was a key part of the mystery, and not for one second did it feel like he was helicoptered in as a gimmick. That's a neat trick when you're keeping the plot galloping along like a stagecoach.

The performances of Matthew MacFadyen, Jerome Flynn and Adam Rothenberg as the three leading officers leapt off the page from episode one. And can we pause for a moment to salute a period drama that actually dares to have its characters speaking as if they're from the past? While Downton's flappers are all but telling each other to "chill out", the men and women of Ripper Street sound like they actually inhabit a world of antiquity.

For a show set in the heart of Jack the Ripper's London, the writers also strongly resisted the idea that the female characters are just victims. Once Jack's horrors are consigned to history, the women emerge as resilient and enterprising, if often struggling against the confines of Victorian society. Long Susan, played by the excellent MyAnna Buring, runs a brothel – one of the very few ways a woman like her could have control of her own destiny in a poor part of London.

It was never confined by its Victorian setting either, covering subjects such as homosexuality, religious cults, marital strife and prejudice. Each episode zoomed in on another part of what felt like a huge and detailed etching of Victorian London life. This week's episode, shown just before the announcement of its cull, was one of the most breathtaking examples of dramatic tension I think I've ever seen. Flynn's character, Drake, is embroiled in the end days of a suicide cult as he tries to rescue his wife from their clutches. Even without the information that the actor too spent time with a cult after his early success, and agreed to put himself through the mental torture again in order to give his best performance, what followed was incredible.

The idea of something so beautifully made being crushed by a celebrity reality show is like a flamethrower melting a snowflake. Ratings may be everything nowadays, even to the BBC, but the price of that silly battle to get more people watching during peak hours will be the annihilation of one quality drama after another, trampled by the clodhoppers of reality TV. It's such a shame.