A tip. Close your eyes when the iron doors swing open to the murder room.
Three questions: Who doesn’t know the great British stage and screen star, and Oscar winner, Helen Mirren (“The Queen,” 2006)? Who doesn’t love Helen Mirren? Aren’t we all ready for that unbeatable, undefeated woman?
From her early days in the 1969 Australian romantic comedy-drama “The Age of Consent” with James Mason, Mirren rose steadily in the British film industry. From “Caligula” to “Calendar Girls” to playing Alma Reville, the wife of Alfred Hitchcock in the 2012 biopic “Hitchcock,” she has never stopped working.
So when I discovered her super successful detective series “Prime Suspect,” I became hooked on it.
According to British press, the first series were produced annually from 1991 to 1995, until she left the role, to avoid typecasting. She returned to play the character in 2003 and again in 2006.
So here she is playing Chief Detective Jane Tennison in her first assignment on the London Police Force. After rising from the ranks as a uniformed cop, we meet her on day one as she slides along, all crisp and neat, respected by the brass and ignored by the boys.
We’re there when she saunters (Mirren always saunters) into the middle of a smoke-filled room cluttered with her good old boy team.
This is not “Blue Bloods” or “FBI” dotted with gorgeous co-workers. These are all male “blokes,” a detective group following a murder investigation that unbeknownst to them, will evolve into a serial killer case.
After the head guy on the case collapses with a fatal heart attack, Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison gets elevated into his position.
The investigation is into the murder of Delia Mornay, a young prostitute. The “blokes” tell Jane that there is very little hard evidence against the main suspect, an ex-convict.
Things quickly blow up when she smells a cover-up going on in the department, followed by the discovery of a second body, mutilated and left to rot in a field gully.
Jane now has to pour each hour of the day into her work, and still juggle a sensitive relationship with her in house mate, the divorced Peter Rawlins, played by the now well-known British actor Tom Wilkinson.
Creator of the show, Lynda La Plante, is the writer here and the winner of three BAFTA awards.
“Prime” is no tossed away old British crime thriller designed to fill air time. It’s loaded with a rich supply of good actors, the best of film noir suspense, and doorways and faces full of darkness.
I guarantee you’ll become addicted to it the way you got hooked by “Law and Order.”
For her work on “Prime Suspect” Mirren received two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Mini Series (1996, 2007). A familiar face popped up, a young Ralph Fiennes in one of his first television roles, as a boyfriend of one of the murdered girls.
Each season of “Prime Suspect” is only two episodes long, about 90 minutes each. With one potty break, two bowls of popcorn and an occasional beer, “Prime Suspect” should carry you through a lot of rainy nights. “Prime Suspect” plays on Amazon Prime at your convenience.
J.P. Devine, of Waterville, is a former stage and screen actor.
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