Series review: 'Prime Suspect' prequel opens the dossier on DCI Jane

31 March 2017 - 20:47 By Andrew Donaldson
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'Prime Suspect: Tennison' tells the story of the eponymous detective's first days in the British police force.
'Prime Suspect: Tennison' tells the story of the eponymous detective's first days in the British police force.
Image: ITV

Modern TV crime drama owes much to 'Prime Suspect', the ITV series based on Lynda La Plante's best-selling novels. It raised the cop genre considerably, with an electrifying Helen Mirren as DCI Jane Tennison, a flawed detective who raged at institutional misogyny and her colleagues' incompetence while tackling crimes of a sadistic nature.

Tennison's characteristics may now be the stuff of convention, cliched even, but they were groundbreaking when Prime Suspect first appeared in 1991, and its meaty, socially conscious influence clearly lingers on in procedurals like Happy Valley and Vera.

Spurred on perhaps by the success of Endeavour, their "early years" reboot of the popular Inspector Morse franchise, ITV have now gambled on a Prime Suspect prequel, which starts March 31 (ITV Choice, DStv 123).

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The big question, though, is will Prime Suspect: Tennison (originally titled Prime Suspect: 1973 in the UK) meet expectations considering the achievements of the original?

Perhaps not, but it's not for want of trying, and what I can reveal is that this is a slow-burner. Given half a chance, it'll win viewers over convincingly.

Stefanie Martini is a 22-year-old Jane Tennison, a rookie London constable eager to expand her duties beyond making tea for the lads and writing up traffic violations.

Happily, the murder of a junkie prostitute called Julia, a runaway daughter from a respectable middle-class family, provides opportunity for career advancement.

Meanwhile, a soon-to-be-released prison convict, Clifford Bentley, played by Alun Armstrong, is planning a bank robbery with his sons.

Tennison crosses paths with the grimy Bentley family during routine door-to-door inquiries about Julia's murder. The threads of this particular plot thicken considerably as the series progresses.

A third storyline concerns Tennison's personal life. Her family, conservative types, disapprove of her career, and when she's not being put in her place, she's getting stick from her domineering father for working late.

Tennison's character, admittedly, is slow to develop. Part of the problem is that we know the future.

Another is the setting. The production has got the 1970s spot on, right down to the cars, fashions and silly moustaches. But, given the everyday sexism of the time, it also means that Tennison is not given all that much to do of interest. Well, not at first.

Martini gives her a a naivete that one would expect in a newcomer in the police, but it's only when she leaves home that we get a hint of the steely resolve so evident in Mirren's Tennison and she begins to make her presence felt.

WATCH: A first look at Prime Suspect: Tennison

This article was originally published in The Times.

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