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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 5, No. 11 |
 DONNA J. PLESH TELEVISION CRITIC and HER JANE
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 Helen Mirren in her sixth adventure as Jane Tennison |
Mirren didn't want Jane
to swallow her career
of TheColumnists.com
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It's hard to believe it has been seven years since
Jane Tennison, the tough, yet sometimes vulnerable and insecure
British police detective, got the bad guy on PBS's "Prime
Suspect 5" miniseries. "'Prime Suspect'" debuted in 1992 with stage and screen actress Helen Mirren playing Tennison. The miniseries proved so popular that more editions followed in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, and 1997. It won numerous British TV awards, and in this country won Emmys, a prestigious Peabody Award, and also was honored by the Television Critics Association. And then there were no more until now with Tennison's return in the two-part "Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness," which takes the now 50-somethingTennison into the shadowy world of emigres as she hunts the killers of two young Bosnian Muslim women in London. Why the seven-year drought ? Mirren says she resisted coming back to the Tennison character because she was concerned that the quality--the high standards--of the previous series could not be met. "It was a very intimidating thought coming back to it," says Mirren. "It had been so highly regarded when we did it before. I really didn't want it to take a step down. And, you know, I didn't know whether it was still relevant six, seven years later. Life moves on pretty rapidly. And I wanted it to be relevant. I wanted it to truly have an audience." But Mirren did come back (she's one of the producers this time) because she found the team she wanted to produce the show, and a writer--Peter Berry--to come up with a story worthy of Jane Tennison. And Mirren's worries about the show being relevant seven years down the road were needless. When the drama aired in Britain last fall it got a 40 per cent share of the viewing audience in the London area alone. For Mirren, the difficult thing about coming back to the role of Jane Tennison was the energy needed for such a demanding production schedule. But, before that, she decided to do some research. "I went and talked to another policewoman because I felt I should be up-to-the-minute as far as police procedures were concerned, and women in the police force were concerned, and so forth," she explains.(According to The Times of London, the woman Mirren spent time with was the most senior woman on the force.) Even though Mirren and "Prime Suspect" seem to be inseparably linked, the actress doesn't feel proprietary towards the character or the role. "You know, one of the reasons I stopped doing it was that I felt that I was becoming too identified with it, althought I'd always done lots of other work in film and theater and television," she says. "But that's the price of success. It was the reason that I stepped away from it for seven years, because I really didn't want to be knocked over by a car and my obituary just talk about 'Prime Suspect.' So I feel that I've achieved that--not distancing, but you know, just that people know that's not all I do." In the first "Prime Suspect," Jane Tennison faced the prejudices of being a woman who, with her skill, had worked her way up the detective ladder in the male dominated police hierarchy. The now 50-something Deputy Superintendent Tennison still fights that same battle--but now another wrinkle has been added: Her age. She's been on the force for several decades and the higher ups are urging her to retire. After all, even though she gets results, she has made few friends in the higher ranks, and her success rankles many of the men on the force. Tennison is in no mood to retire, and it doesn't seem the now 58-year-old Mirren has any plans to give up the acting trade. She always seems to be doing something--theater, movies, TV. Earlier this year she starred in the successful comedy-drama film "Calendar Girls," and recently was on the London stage in "Mourning Becomes Electra." Later this spring she co-stars with Robert Redford in a new big-screen movie, and proving no role is too small, in March she was a guest caller voice on NBC's "Frasier." Being so busy in so many performing arenas, does Mirren have time for another "Prime Suspect," and is she even interested? She's left that door open, if you read her words. "It's very difficult because this one, in England, has been massively successful, I think more successful than almost any of the others have been. And it becomes a hard act to follow, you know. And I only want to follow it if we can find another script that's as strong and relevant as this one." ©2004 by Donna J. Plesh. The photo is courtesy of WGBH-TV, Boston. |
TO READ RON MILLER'S REVIEW OF 'PRIME SUSPECT 6,"
click here: PRIME SUSPECT 6
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