Line #3 Series/PrimeSuspect


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/image_1205.jpeg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:''"Don't call me ma'am, I'm not the bloody queen!"'']]
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4	A British PoliceProcedural series starring Creator/HelenMirren, which originally aired on Creator/{{ITV}} in seven series between 1991 and 2006.
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6	Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Jane Tennison (Mirren) is a straight-laced London Metropolitan Police officer who has been passed over time and time again for promotion due to her lack of penis. When another DCI dies while investigating the murder of a prostitute, Tennison takes her chance. However things take a turn for the bizarre when the body in the prostitute's room isn't actually the prostitute and the real hooker is nowhere to be found. But solving the case won't be the difficult part -- it will be getting the men in her department to stop trying to sabotage her.
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8	Written by crime novelist Creator/LyndaLaPlante and one of the first police dramas to star a female in the lead role, the first season mostly deals with sexism in the workplace. However over time the program slowly evolved to tackle other issues from institutional racism to sexual perversion. Running themes also include Tennison's growing dependence on alcohol and her attempts to juggle her working and personal lives. It won three Prime Time Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries (and a Best Actress trophy for Mirren) as well as Golden Globes, [=BAFTAs=] and Peabodys.
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10	A [[Series/PrimeSuspectUS U.S. remake]], set in New York City and starring Creator/MariaBello, aired on Creator/{{NBC}} for half a season (2011–12). A {{Prequel}}, ''Prime Suspect 1973'' (broadcast in the U.S. as ''Prime Suspect: Tennison''), began in 2017, showing a 22-year-old WPC Tennison (Stefanie Martini) starting her career in the even more sexist police force of TheSeventies.
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13	!!Tropes used:
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15	* AcquittedTooLate: [[spoiler:Inverted with Campbell Lafferty in ''Errors of Judgement'', who is ignored and released after he attempts to turn himself in, resulting in his murder by The Street.]]
16	* TheAlcoholic: Tennison.
17	* TheAtoner: [[spoiler: Bill Otley]] owns up to his bad behavior as part of his AA recovery, and counsels Tennison on her own drinking.
18	* BackForTheDead: [[spoiler: Sgt. Bill Otley]].
19	* BigBadFriend: [[spoiler: DCS Ballinger]] in Series 5.
20	* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: In series 1, Tennison feels like she's nailed the prime suspect -- George Marlow -- as a serial killer and yet, despite the evidence and a confession, the very last moment shows him in court pleading "Not Guilty" to all charges. We eventually learn that he was convicted, however.]]
21	* CompressedVice: Averted with Jane's alcoholism. Even in the first series, she drinks alone.
22	* ConstructiveBodyDisposal: "Operation Nadine" kicks off when the new resident of a home has the concrete slabs covering his garden dug up and the workmen discover the skeletal remains of a teenage girl buried underneath. It leads Inspector Tennison onto the path of a twisted SerialRapist, who killed one of his victims six years previously and then had the house's former resident help him pave over her to cover it up.
23	* CPRCleanPrettyReliable: In series seven, [[spoiler: averted with Bill Otley's death]].
24	* DaChief: A rare example of a series with this character as the protagonist. Tennison also has to deal with various higher-ups.
25	* DefectiveDetective
26	* DisposableSexWorker: Mentioned in Season One when Jane interviews the fellow prostitute friends of one of the victims, who are not pleased that their friend's murder was given little attention at the time because of her profession.
27	* DownerEnding: Sure, Jane [[spoiler:[[BittersweetEnding solves her last case and earns the gratitude of Sallie's parents]]]] but [[spoiler:she's lost everyone in the world who's ever cared about her: both her parents are dead; she's alienated herself from her sister and her niece; Otley gets murdered in front of her; and Penny turns out to be Sallie's killer.]]
28	* DrunkDriver: Penny accuses Jane of being drunk when she has a [[NearMisses near-miss]], though it's possible that Jane was under the limit and distracted because she was enjoying Penny's company.
29	* EverybodySmokes: It's the 90s. Of course they do.
30	* FictionalCounterpart: ''[[Series/CrimewatchUK Crimewatch]]'' pops up as ''Crime Night'' occasionally. They might have been able to make use of the real thing had it not belonged to [[Creator/TheBBC The Other Side]]. (''Crime Night'' is portrayed in-universe as an ITV programme.)
31	** The Day Centre in Soho that keeps popping up in Series 3 was probably based on the RealLife charity, Streetwise Youth, which operated in the area in TheNineties. (It has since been absorbed into the much larger Terrence Higgins Trust, due to funding problems.)
32	* FindingJudas: In Series 5, Jane suspects someone in her team is leaking information to The Street. Suspicion falls initially on DI Devanney, whose DisappearedDad is a career criminal. It turns out to be [[spoiler:her boss]] who was doing it for his idea of the greater good.
33	* FriendToAllChildren: Tennison's very good with young victims/witnesses.
34	* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: Averted by [[spoiler:Jane.]]
35	* GrossUpCloseUp: The first season's graphic shots of rotting and mutilated corpses were very extreme for the time, although by a couple of decades later they were standard practice in gritty crime shows.
36	* HandsOffParenting: In Series 7, what little we see of Penny's mum is of her moping or topping up her wine glass. Her dad is otherwise preoccupied [[spoiler:by his affair with her best friend.]]
37	* IKnowYouKnowIKnow: Tennison plays this game in Series 5.
38	* IntergenerationalFriendship: Jane and Penny in Series 7. Progresses to [[Main/LikeASonToMe Like a Daughter to Me]]. [[spoiler:It doesn't last.]]
39	* IrregularSeries: Aired one series per year from 1991-96 (skipping 1994) then the final two series aired in 2003 and 2006, respectively.
40	* MarketBasedTitle: The prequel series ''Prime Suspect 1973'' went by the alternate title ''Prime Suspect: Tennison'' on PBS in the U.S., apparently because the novel it was adapted from was titled ''Tennison''.
41	* MeaningfulName: Vera in Series 3. Her name comes from the Latin word for "truth". Not only does she know the truth [[spoiler:about Connie's murder]], her name is an expression of [[UsefulNotes/{{Transgender}} her true self]].
42	* MiscarriageOfJustice: In Series 4, it is suggested that the [[spoiler:Marlow]] case was an example of this.[[spoiler:This idea is subsequently quashed by the end of the series.]]
43	* MistakenForRacist: When Jane's boss brings in Robert Oswalde, a Black officer, to work on her team on a case in a minority-majority community, she sets him to the task of looking up missing persons rather than going out into the field to work with said community. DI Burkin interprets this as "keeping our coloured friend in his place". When Bob challenges her about being made to do office grunt work, she says that she put him on it because she didn't want him to be treated as a token. He points out that he would much prefer to be given the work best suited to his rank and experience.
44	* MovingTheGoalposts: Particularly in the first season, the men working under Jane constantly blame her for screwing up, overlooking vital information and collaring the wrong people after doing their best to deliberately sabotage her efforts.
45	* NiceJobFixingItVillain: In series 1, Sargeant Otley sends Jane to Surrey on a wild goose chase just to waste her time... and Jane ends up identifying the victim, gaining her first lead in the case.
46	* NobleBigotWithABadge: DI Frank Burkin, who is disparaging towards the Black British, but is still a professional colleague of Jane's.
47	* SerialKiller: The first season begins with the murder of a prostitute. Then it turns out they misidentified the body and the real prostitute is missing. Then they find her decomposed body, killed in the same way as the first victim. Then older cases start looking suspiciously familiar...
48	* ShootTheDog: [[spoiler: The Street]] in Series 5. Literally.
49	* SmokingIsCool: Pretty much everyone smokes.
50	* SuspiciouslyAproposMusic: Jane drunkenly grooving to ''Stay Awhile'' in her old room. When Penny [[CallBack does the same thing later]], the record she chooses is ''In The Middle of Nowhere''.
51	* TitleDrop: Pretty much every episode: "S/he is our prime suspect."
52	* ToAbsentFriends: Jane, her sister and her niece head to the pub across the road from the crematorium after [[spoiler:her dad]]'s funeral. It's not very convivial; Jane compares it to a reunion of [[LondonGangster East End villains]].
53	* TransAtlanticEquivalent: Remade in 2011 by NBC, starring Maria Bello as Jane Timoney. Was widely expected to suck by fans of the original; the pilot, however, indicates that it may be one of the more effective British-to-American translations of modern television, mostly via not trying to ''be'' its predecessor. It only lasted a year.
54	* WarIsHell:
55	** Jane's dad was an ambulance driver during the [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII war]], and was one of the first on the scene at Belsen after its liberation. After all the terrible things he saw, he wanted nothing more to do with the evil of the world. Jane on other hand, chose to involve herself in it, which was probably why her father could never be completely supportive of her career choice even though he was proud of her.
56	** The plot of series 6 ("The Last Witness") begins with a Bosnian woman who emigrated to the UK as a refugee from the [=1990s=] [[UsefulNotes/TheYugoslavWars Bosnian War]] being found dead in a construction site. [[spoiler:It turns out that she was a survivor of (and eyewitness to) a [[RapePillageAndBurn wartime massacre and rape]] of Bosnian civilians committed by a Serbian man who also emigrated to the UK, and that he murdered her in order to cover up the fact that he was personally to blame for that war crime.]] Two things make it very difficult for DCI Tennison to bring criminal charges against the culprit: [[spoiler:another Serbian immigrant, who had faught in the war under the war criminal's command and remains loyal to him, [[TakingTheHeat willlingly takes the fall]] for the murder that the war criminal committed in the UK; and the war criminal is also an undercover [[TheInformant informant]] working under an assumed identity for the UsefulNotes/SecretIntelligenceService (in order to help them find other war criminals), who are in denial about his culpability for war crimes, and act as {{obstructive bureaucrat}}s who use the UsefulNotes/OfficialSecretsAct to restrict what information the police can use as evidence in their murder investigation.]]
57	* WhatDidIDoLastNight: At the beginning of the final series, a drunken Tennison picks up a man at a bar, only to wake up the next morning alone and with a nasty bruise.
58	* WhatTheHellHero: Vera calls Tennison out for pretending not to be a transbigot in order to get information from her.
59	-->"You were only pretending to like me."
60	* WhenYouComingHomeDad: A variation. Jane isn't a parent, but her boyfriend from the first season exists solely to get exasperated with her for staying too late at work. [[spoiler: He eventually leaves her because of this.]]
61	* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: [[spoiler:Penny]] becomes this.

Context Series / PrimeSuspect