Spoilers all the way through.
If you're like me, you read the reviews only after seeing the movie or program. If I really enjoyed it, I then check the reaction of others - a sharing of the exhilaration. The other reviews here are excellent and reflect my own views.
This is a role in which Helen Mirren has done consummate justice (yeah, yeah, the wordplay is intentional ): as 'nancinger' aptly says in her review, 'she's as hard as nails on the surface and as crumpled up as ever on the inside.' And tougher than Dirty Harry.
The suspense is palpable. The race against time in the hospital against a murderer, and we really don't know how it will turn out, keeps us on the edge of our seats. But there's suspense in the interrogations, too. Do you, as I do, try to anticipate the questions, try to out-cool the 'interrogatee'? When I'm stumped, Tennison comes through, though not without a sideways glance, a bit of a pause to think. There's suspense in the politics, in how Tennison has to negotiate the labyrinthine obstacles her own department puts in her way, how she has to guess at her own people's agendas, how she has to manage them, offend them yet keep their loyalties, there's suspense as to who will stab her in the back and who will pull through for her.
Some of the devices are obvious, some less so, but they're effective. We see cleaning women often enough to think 'enough, already, I get the point!!!', Tennison reaching out for her father, then pulling her hand back, but most effective is the light shining through a bullet hole onto her eye at the scene of the massacre, recalling her earlier eye exam from its perpetrator very effective indeed. (And I must give kudos to Oleg Menshikov for his outstanding performance as a charismatic psychopath.)
When Tennison first visited her father, I was worried it would be filler, but it turned out to be essential. A later visit was a wonderful paean to this great TV detective, a rousing peroration that explains, by one who should know, what makes Tennison tick and what she should do. Mix in the hesitation with the hand and we see the twin manifestations of her hardness and her 'crumpledness' in the same scene.
It is inevitable that when I pop in the DVD to watch a new Prime Suspect series, I will watch it through in one sitting, three hours, four hours be damned... A superlative show.
If you're like me, you read the reviews only after seeing the movie or program. If I really enjoyed it, I then check the reaction of others - a sharing of the exhilaration. The other reviews here are excellent and reflect my own views.
This is a role in which Helen Mirren has done consummate justice (yeah, yeah, the wordplay is intentional ): as 'nancinger' aptly says in her review, 'she's as hard as nails on the surface and as crumpled up as ever on the inside.' And tougher than Dirty Harry.
The suspense is palpable. The race against time in the hospital against a murderer, and we really don't know how it will turn out, keeps us on the edge of our seats. But there's suspense in the interrogations, too. Do you, as I do, try to anticipate the questions, try to out-cool the 'interrogatee'? When I'm stumped, Tennison comes through, though not without a sideways glance, a bit of a pause to think. There's suspense in the politics, in how Tennison has to negotiate the labyrinthine obstacles her own department puts in her way, how she has to guess at her own people's agendas, how she has to manage them, offend them yet keep their loyalties, there's suspense as to who will stab her in the back and who will pull through for her.
Some of the devices are obvious, some less so, but they're effective. We see cleaning women often enough to think 'enough, already, I get the point!!!', Tennison reaching out for her father, then pulling her hand back, but most effective is the light shining through a bullet hole onto her eye at the scene of the massacre, recalling her earlier eye exam from its perpetrator very effective indeed. (And I must give kudos to Oleg Menshikov for his outstanding performance as a charismatic psychopath.)
When Tennison first visited her father, I was worried it would be filler, but it turned out to be essential. A later visit was a wonderful paean to this great TV detective, a rousing peroration that explains, by one who should know, what makes Tennison tick and what she should do. Mix in the hesitation with the hand and we see the twin manifestations of her hardness and her 'crumpledness' in the same scene.
It is inevitable that when I pop in the DVD to watch a new Prime Suspect series, I will watch it through in one sitting, three hours, four hours be damned... A superlative show.