Thirty years ago, Helen Mirren stepped into the role of Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, and an icon was born. In the series Prime Suspect (which ran from 1991-2006), Mirren’s Tennison created an indelible archetype of the female investigator: a take-no-crap leader battling the overtly misogynist and often corrupt institution that she nevertheless believed in very deeply.
In less talented hands, Tennison could have been a superficial and unconvincing character. With her booze and her chain smoking, her dysfunctional personal relationships and her obsession with her work, she could have been little more than a simple gender-reversal: your typical grizzled male detective slipped into silk blouses and sensible heels. But the magic of Prime Suspect lies in the alchemy between the character, conceived by series creator and writer Lynda LaPlante, and Mirren’s own charisma, which gives Tennison verve and nuance. Tennison’s tough-minded doggedness and Mirren’s sexy irreverence and subtle fragilities remake the kind of role normally played by a man. They make a dynamic and unforgettable character that allows the show to explore and challenge the gendered norms of the police procedural. Over seven series (of two episodes each), Prime Suspect draws a gripping and thoughtful portrait of Tennison—how her toughness and softness, her skill and her compulsions, are all shaped by her place as a woman in a man’s game.
Tennison’s tough-minded doggedness and Mirren’s sexy irreverence and subtle fragilities remake the kind of role normally played by a man.When we first meet Tennison, she is one of a handful of women to have reached the rank of Detective Chief Inspector. Sidelined from major cases, she is frequently reminded of a report that suggests the public is much more comfortable with male officers. (She’ll soon deal with this personally, when a victim’s grieving father hysterically sobs “I don’t want a bloody woman!” right in front of her.) Tennison has to fight to lead a murder case. She only has a shot at this one—what initially seems to be the brutal rape and killing of a sex worker—because the DCI originally assigned to it dies of a heart attack. When Tennison asks for the case, she plainly states that she’s been held back because she’s a woman. When her wary superintendent (not wanting the political heat) tells her he’ll think about it, her answer is immediate: “Well that’s not good enough.” This is the first of many extremely satisfying scenes where Tennison just barely gets away with mouthing off to her superiors. She’s always blunt because she knows she’s right, and whenever she scores a point off one of her bosses, she gives an impish little grin as she delivers her parting “Yes, sirs,” and “Thank you, sirs.”
Landing this first case is only the beginning of Tennison’s battle against sexism in the force. Her superiors treat her either as a diversity box to tick, a pain in the ass, or an object of condescension. She takes charge of a team still mourning their dead boss. Many resent her, some call her names behind her back, and almost all speculate about her personal life. (It’s not a great testament to the observational powers of the Metropolitan Police that few of these men can imagine why anyone would want to sleep with Helen Mirren.) More fundamentally, these officers just aren’t used to a woman in charge: when one of them instinctively addresses her as “Sir,” Tennsion fires off her most famous line: “Listen, I like to be called guv’nor or the boss. I don’t like ma’am, I’m not the bloody queen.”
She also has to deal with a nemesis on her squad. Detective Sergeant Otley (Tom Bell), a little weasel of a man, tries to stymie her at every turn. When Tennison appears on a TV program called Crimenight (sort of like America’s Most Wanted) in hopes of finding some witnesses, Otley scrutinizes her every move, venting his spleen at the television. “Look at her,” he says. “Who the hell does she think she is?” It’s hard to watch a man display such naked hatred for a woman, as well as a burning desire to see her fail. Tennison initially spends as much time countering Otley’s attempts to undermine her as she does investigating the murders. He sends her on wild goose chases as they try to connect their suspect to unsolved cases. More brazenly, he conceals evidence to hide the fact that members of the squad have been patronizing sex workers who are police informants, including one of their victims. When Tennison discovers this, she finally gets Otley booted from the investigation, and gets a replacement DS who is very supportive and makes sure she’s always well-stocked with cigarettes.
Over seven series (of two episodes each), Prime Suspect draws a gripping and thoughtful portrait of Tennison—how her toughness and softness, her skill and her compulsions, are all shaped by her place as a woman in a man’s game.Tennison handles these obstacles, as well as a tricky and rapidly expanding case, with a steel backbone that doesn’t preclude vulnerability. She’s confident and knows she’s good at her job, but her brashness doesn’t mean she never second-guesses herself. Mirren is a genius at showing the small moments of nerves or self-doubt between and beneath Tennison’s cool, tenacious professionalism. Some of my favorite parts of Prime Suspect are the briefings Tennison gives in the incident room. She usually clears her throat and fumbles a bit before she launches into an authoritative tone. You can see her get a bit flustered when she gets disappointing or unexpected updates on the case. Then there’s a moment of silence and fumbling before she decides on her next move. Particularly in the first series, when Tennison is a little more unsure of herself, Mirren does a lot of fine work with expressions that shift from disappointment to determination, and the private moments of jubilation, like when Tennison checks to see if anyone’s in the hallway before she punches her fist in the air. When she finally gets her suspect to confess, there’s a great shot where she looks down and allows herself a microscopic triumphant smile before she composes her face back into bureaucratic indifference.
Tennison’s little moments of awkward fumbling also make up one of the show’s most innovative and appealing elements: its realistic portrayals of the little annoyances of a working woman’s life. There are a lot of subtle moments that emphasize the ways in which the everyday tasks of the job are made a little bit more onerous by a woman’s need to present herself a certain way: smart, but not overly feminine. Tennison is in an endless battle with briefcases, wayward scarves, faded makeup and stained shirts. (No one can spill a coffee or drop a file full of papers, and then exclaim “Shit!” with vicious frustration like Jane Tennison.) When the investigation hits a standstill, she actually keeps herself from being thrown off the case by hiding in the ladies’ room. The restroom is a kind of haven for Tennison in the dominantly masculine spaces of police stations. It’s where she goes to collect herself, a space she can go to where she can hide any vulnerability that might be taken for weakness. We frequently see shots of Tennison looking at herself in the bathroom mirror, steeling her nerves and composing her expression before she has to face a confrontation or deliver bad news.
Tennison’s charm and swagger prove (as she must) that she is as tough as the boys. But the series frequently highlights how being a woman makes her a different, often better, kind of officer. This is not because she benefits from any innate “feminine intuition,” but because socially constructed notions of gender and labor give her an edge. In the first series, through close attention to paperwork, Tennison realizes that the team has misidentified the victim’s body. Initially, the murder squad has been rushing to arrest the suspect, but they don’t have enough evidence to detain him. Despite pressure from above, Tennison doggedly insists that she won’t bring him in until she has enough evidence, not just for one murder, but for several others with the same MO. (The only other woman officer in the station makes a major breakthrough in the case when she links the victims through the suspect’s wife’s work as a beautician—something that hadn’t occurred to the men.) Tennison says that the only way she knows to do her job is through “instinct and slog.” She’s got great instincts, but she’s also willing to do more of the slog than a lot of her male colleagues, who prefer the flashier parts of the job. Tennison is often found at a desk late at night, looking through files, a cigarette in one hand and a glass of scotch by her side. While Tennison has no problem being a tough and demanding boss (and sometimes takes this to extremes), she does not only play the alpha dog. She can shed more masculine ideas of leadership and dominance and is willing to work collaboratively with her team, asking for their opinions on the case, and even asking her to tell them when they think she’s wrong. This approach often leads to big breakthroughs in a case.
While she is preternaturally-tough, Tennison also has unique insights and reserves when it comes to talking to witnesses. Even when she’s humiliated, she can turn it around to her advantage. Male suspects like to sexualize her, trying to humiliate her either by suggesting she’s frigid or promiscuous. In these moments, the nuances of Mirren’s performance shows everything. Tennison is not impermeable to these insults, but she composes herself quickly, and she realizes that these responses means that the witness is floundering. She takes a beat and then volleys the most pointed questions back at them in a flat but somewhat self-satisfied tone. When—and it’s usually a when, not an if—Tennison is condescended to by male witnesses and suspects, she has no problem playing the dumb blonde. She girlishly asks the man in question to explain what it is she doesn’t understand, and that’s when he falls into her trap, revealing crucial evidence. Yet Tennison also has a genuine soft touch, especially with children. She bends down to look them in the eyes, and talks in a sweet, cooing voice. In the final series, she manages to get a terrified young girl to surrender a handgun during a hostage situation.
Tennison also can get more information out of witnesses because she respects people often dismissed as “less than” by the police. She takes time to earn the trust of victims’ family members, even when they are poor, undocumented, drug addicts, or criminals themselves. In the first series, some of the serial killer’s victims are sex workers. When an officer says that sex workers who take their clients to an abandoned warehouse are “asking” to be killed, Tennison “accidentally” slams a door in his face. She is friendly with one of the victims’ friends (who are also sex workers), taking them to the pub and chatting about hairstyles. When a john mistakes her for a sex worker and propositions her, she just rolls with it. “I’m busy right now,” she says, removing his hand from her thigh. “Piss off.” In the third series, in which the murder of a victim of child exploitation leads to an investigation of sexual abuse in care homes for young boys, a key witness is a trans woman. Tennison is the only officer who doesn’t misgender her in interviews. “I’ve always appreciated the way you speak to me,” she says.
Mirren makes the sympathy and respect she has for these diverse communities she serves feel very deep and genuine. But there are always undertones of uncomfortable ambiguity. When we see her face soften when a witness confides in her, we can never be completely sure how much these signs of feeling are natural responses, and when they are calculations made to make a witness more useful. As a case heats up, she can drop her air of kindness and understanding, and go after those who trusted her with the full bad-cop routine. When, in a fit of anger, she does finally (and intentionally) misgender the trans woman, the sting of betrayal is palpable. “You always called me Vera,” she says, realizing (as we do) that Tennison’s softness is often a means to an end.
The first three series (all written by LaPlante) are the golden age of Prime Suspect. They are tightly plotted, with plenty of twists and turns, but they always remain very grounded in the nitty-gritty of the procedural format. These are mostly shot in a verité style, and we really see the rhythms of an ongoing investigation (long lulls and sudden action). There is a lot of great detail about everyday complaints and annoyances—nobody ever seems to ever get their sandwich order right. This style also reveals the way that Tennison gradually, in small moments, bonds with the (still mostly white and male) officers—her “lads.” It’s a persuasive portrait about how sexist attitudes can be at least somewhat overcome by interpersonal interactions.
The problems with policing that LaPlante illuminates—their poor treatment of black and queer communities, and of sex workers, as well as the cover-up or enabling of pedophile rings by the highest ranks—all feel sadly relevant today. The different strands of the narrative—Tennison’s triumphs and challenges, the ensemble work of the officers, and the twists and turns of an interesting case with social implications—all weave together into a compelling and believable whole.
In the subsequent series, the cases become more melodramatic in their twists and turns, and more of the focus falls on Tennison herself. The higher stakes and more lurid details of these investigations make Tennison increasingly question the nobility and value of policing, as she confronts more of its institutional corruption and the many ways it fails to deliver justice. Her belief in law and order (which, to her, means not only delivering justice, but also doing it by the book) has been her guiding star.
The failures of too-fallible policing are not new to Prime Suspect. In the early series, some kind of error usually leads to a second, avoidable death or tragedy. Tennison’s politics are always good—she speaks out against racism, homophobia and corruption in the police force—but her good intentions cannot stop misconduct and bad mistakes. In the second series, an emotionally fragile (and innocent) suspect dies by suicide in his cell after a particularly cruel interrogation. In one of her more morally ambiguous moments, Tennison takes the side of the black officer who interrogated the suspect (an officer with whom she’d had an affair.) Though these incidents clearly shake Tennison, she still feels confident that “law and order” ultimately prevails.
In these later series, however, the corruption and indifference of the police become harder to justify. In the fifth season, she discovers that her superior officer (a married man she’s been sleeping with) is using a major drug lord as an informant, so he can juke the stats with charges for minor crimes while letting this far more dangerous criminal terrorize the community. He justifies his decision by arguing that the war on drugs is intractable, and it’s better to try and contain it than uproot it. This infuriates Tennison, who says this strategy completely overlooks the people who live in the communities terrorized by the drug trade. It denies them their right to “law and order.” In the sixth series, two Bosnian sisters are murdered because they were witnesses to a massacre during Yugoslav Wars. Tennison is told she can’t arrest the war criminal who murdered them (and engineered the massacre) because he is under witness protection. With this case, she faces a moral quandary: is getting justice for these two women worth more than the many war criminals that their murderer (and protected witness) could potentially expose? Tennison bravely admits that she doesn’t know, but she must nevertheless do the job that’s put in front of her.
These stories of melodrama and disenchantment really center on the more emotionally expressive elements of Mirren’s performance, as her softness towards witnesses develops into full-blown emotional involvement. (Something that series one Tennison was emphatic that a detective should never do.) We see much more of Tennison’s facial expressions as she reacts, with unabashed sorrow, and anger, at the horrible blowback that police action can effect on those tied to a criminal investigation.
This is particularly true of the sixth series, where Tennison’s investigation of the murder of the undocumented Bosnian immigrant initially forces her to confront the lives of undocumented and other poor people who do the back-breaking and anonymous work of cleaning hotels and hospitals. She finally meets the victim’s sister, and we watch how her soft face of empathy turns from pain then horror as she listens to her account of the massacre they both barely survived as children. When the sister is also murdered to assure her silence,
Mirren turns in a haunting and haunted performance as Tennison starts taking it personally, and she goes rogue and heads to Bosnia to investigate.
“The Last Act,”Prime Suspect’s seventh and final series, is complicated in some ways and drastically oversimplified in others, and I always find it a bit hard to take. On the one hand, it seems like a straightforward case of character assassination: it has Tennison make stupid and unmotivated decisions that she never would in the past, all in service of a plot that’s unimaginatively Jacobean in its lurid melodrama. When I am not too defensive of Golden Age Tennsion, however I can see reasoning behind it. Here Tennison gets the kind of treatment that Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe gets in Robert Altman’s film of The Long Goodbye. It’s a kind of bizzarro-world version of the character, but the story and trajectory make a certain sense if you follow the character to a darkly perverse, but plausible conclusion.Tennison is weeks away from retirement, and her final case is the murder of a pregnant 14-year-old girl. Her hard drinking has progressed into full-blown alcoholism. This is treated in a rather Chandler-esque manner, showing both the fun and glamour of alcoholic oblivion (Tennison dances around to Dusty Springfield records) as well as its bleak aftermath—waking up in rumpled clothes with no memory but cloaked in self-loathing. Her behavior gets more dangerous and erratic, to the point of jeopardizing the investigation: she drives a witness after she’s been drinking, and shows up drunk to an interrogation of the victim’s father.
Tennison reluctantly and sporadically starts going to AA meetings. In the brevity of these scenes, “The Last Act” shows its hand: it’s more interested in Tennison’s addiction as a plot device than as an exploration of what’s happened to a complicated character we’ve come to know over 15 years. True, it’s unrealistic to think that the proud Tennison, who often brushes off anyone who tries to probe her emotions, would automatically take to 12 step recovery. But examining Tennison’s own thoughts on her drinking would require complicating her persona as the taciturn, hard-drinking detective in a way the show is not quite prepared to do.
“The Last Act” also doubles down on the toll that the job has taken on Tennison’s personal life. Her father is dying, and this leads to all the big questions of what you do with your time on this planet. Tennison is quite close to her father. A World War II veteran who saw the atrocity of the camps, he never wanted his daughter to be a cop and have to face life’s horrors. But he really respects her integrity and bravery, and it’s clear that in losing him Tennison is losing the best possible version of herself.Her once-warm relationship with her sister has soured, and her nieces complain they never see her. And maybe the ugliest part of Mirren’s performance (and, truthfully, maybe the worst part—it’s a bit of basic drunk acting) is her tirade against them after her father’s funeral.
“The Last Act” really moves into overblown noir territory when Tennison develops an obsession with the teenage girl Penny, who was the victim’s best friend. This is Tennison’s talent and bond with children taken to a baroque extreme. She says she sees her younger self in the girl, and crosses all kinds of boundaries: Tennison takes Penny to museums and to her father’s house, gets drunk, and shows Penny her old police uniform. The plausible and proffered explanations of Tennison’s inappropriate relationship with Penny are upsetting: either she’s a woman of a certain age obsessed with recapturing her lost youth, or a woman of a certain age mourning the child she never had. This suggests that, for the hardboiled female detective, the only possible self-destructive impulses are ones of cartoonish hysteria.
When—predictably and inevitably—it transpires that Penny herself is the killer, Tennison is incredulous and chastened that she missed the clues. This error in judgment is like when Marlowe is duped by one of his femmes fatales. “She stole my heart,” she says, tearfully and ruefully. This culminates in a truly incredible interview between them where the hysterical and raging Penny confesses. Tennison has made Penny feel as if they were friends, and her arrest is the ultimate betrayal. Tennison admits the mistake of this inappropriate intimacy. “I thought I could give you love,” she says, in the most histrionic utterance that’s ever come out of her normally tight-lipped mouth. Penny, who now has way too much information, makes Tennison talk about her abortion (which she had at the end of the third series.) This upsets her, she says she’s “not proud of it” but it was the right choice. It’s both a bizarre and truly unproductive encounter. Hanging on to some of her skill as an interrogator, Tennison realizes that the girl didn’t intend to kill her friend, but was just trying to force a miscarriage. (The team discovers that Penny’s father is the one who impregnated her best friend.) This would get Penny a lesser charge, but the embittered Penny refuses to admit this, so she goes down for murder.
With this lurid conclusion, “The Last Act” reveals what’s always been something of an Achilles’s heel for Prime Suspect: the subject of how Tennison’s personal life has been affected by her job. This interesting question is handled unevenly. The show has a tendency to treat Tennison’s lack of long-term relationships, and especially her lack of a child, as a tragedy that the job has doomed her to. It gets caught in a sexist trap of its own making: it creates a compelling protagonist out of an ambitious woman who loves her job, but it can never fully entertain the possibility that Tennison wouldn’t want to “have it all,” and might prefer to be alone. The show never considered the possibility that a woman could be good with children but not want any of her own. That this woman might feel sadness about an abortion but ultimately not regret it requires a level of subtly the show can’t reach, even when Mirren’s performance clearly suggests it. The depths that the show reduces Tennison to in this final outing do have a certain logic, but they also feel a bit like the show is doling out its own judgment and punishment on Tennison.
Tennison ends her time on our televisions in a very Chandler-esque way, skipping her retirement party (and the indignity of a male stripper) and walking out of the station into the unknown, disillusioned at her own gullibility and the unjust resolution of her last case. It is deeply sad, and perhaps a bit cruel, when we remember the end of the very first series, when, at the end of the case, Tennison is serenaded and showered in champagne by her “lads.” As much as I feel that the series owed Tennison more in the end, it’s hard to see it ending any other way. (It is just as unthinkable to imagine Tennison taking up powerwalking, birding, knitting, or any other of your standard retirement hobbies.) Despite the long odds the show itself has left her with, I am still left with the (admittedly optimistic) impression that Tennison is going to be alright. Mirren gives us signature Tennison in this final shot—a look of sadness and trepidation quickly overcome by a steady gait and a head held high. Many have underestimated that only slightly-shaky poise and lived to regret it.
