Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Directors: Phillip Davis, Tom Hooper, Phillip Martin, Via Vision Entertainment.
English best-selling author, screenwriter and former actress Lynda La Plante deserves the mantle of the Queen of Crime. She is best known for scripting the Prime Suspect television crime series.
La Plante is a prolific writer with an impressive list of television shows and books to her credit. There are too many to list here. From the series Widows in the early 1980s through to Trial and Retribution and Anna Travis books, the 1993 Emmy-nominated screenwriter has been entertaining crime fiction lovers on screen and page for decades.
Lynda’s original script for the much-acclaimed Prime Suspect won awards from BAFTA, Emmy, British Broadcasting and Royal Television Society, as well as the 1993 Edgar Allan Poe Award.
One of La Plante’s greatest creations would have to be Jane Tennison, the detective inspector played by Oscar-winning Helen Mirren (The Queen), who dominated TV screens in the 1990s Prime Suspect series which garnered many awards including six British Academy Awards.
The British detective drama became such an iconic series because, for the first time, it featured a high-ranking female police officer working in a murder squad. Tennison was already in her 40s in the original TV series, and was therefore mature enough and sufficiently experienced to handle the discrimination that she faced at every level. Added to the strong storyline was the introduction of DNA for the first time.
Needless to say, Mirren’s brilliant portrayal of the character was a major contributory factor to its success. It’s phenomenal how she became a tough woman in a very male dominated career, and how she managed to achieve the rank of DCI.
Whether she’s grittily leading her cop team in another lurid murder case or dissolving in tears at home Mirren’s Jane Tennison is always a persuasive act. This skilled, top class detective is forced to pit her wits against criminals and colleagues alike in a hostile, male dominated environment.
The tense, uncompromising, procedural drama holds the attention while being solved. That’s certainly self explanatory with the storylines in each of the two episodes in Series 5, 6 and 7 titled: ‘Errors of Judgement’, ‘The Last Witness’ and ‘The Final Act’.
Tennison is “a women, the right age to have achieved her rank, to show her ambition, her prowess at deflecting discrimination and the work involved in being the female head of a successful homicide unit”. She also deals well with a range of personal and institutional bias.
La Plante proves a few points: “My vision for Prime Suspect was to show that the police must deal with the emotional ramifications of a tragic murder as well as hunting down the killer”.
This 4-disc DVD set includes the final six feature-length episodes from Series 5-7.
What was the name of the award won by Prime Suspect in 1993? If your answer is correct, then you could win one of two DVDs of Prime Suspect: Series 5-7. Entries should be sent to [email protected] by Monday, 19 October 2020. Names of the winners will be announced in Frank Cassidy’s PS-sssst…! column on 20 October 2020.
