"Impossible to watch this final chapter stretched over four intense hours without being staggered (once again) by the artistry of Helen Mirren."
Barbara Peters,
The Poisoned Pen
Impossible to watch this final chapter stretched over four intense hours without being staggered (once again) by the artistry of Helen Mirren. This astonishing actress, currently on view as Elizabeth II, plays a Superintendent Jane Tennison coming up on the end of her policing career, facing retirement, facing the death of her father and her inability to connect with her sister, facing the alcoholism that threatens to cut short her investigation and jerk her off her last case, facing a young girl who just may mirror the young Jane, a girl to whom Jane might offer love. This is a case filled with ironies, with circling back and reflecting on life's choices as one pushes sixty, and one where the viewer shares with Jane the sense of being about to step off the edge into the unknown. As someone whose work has defined her life ever since she left school and joined up at 17 as an act of defying her parents, Jane is truly terrified. No wonder she drinks to the point of blacking out. And beyond.
It actually needs a history with Jane's earlier cases (earlier Prime Suspects ) to fully appreciate this edgy story, although the uninitiated can thoroughly enjoy it. The reappearance of a former (male) colleague as Jane reluctantly attends AA makes more of an impact if you know the role he played in Jane's hard-won career in a male-dominated force that has always been rough on women, as readers of British crime fiction know.
The characters from the wounded parents of the missing girl soon found dead on the heath to the schoolmates to the other coppers and to Jane's family are exceptionally well played (even if you have to up the sound to understand the accents; it isn't catering to the American ear). But the centerpiece of the drama along with Jane Tennison is modern London . It isn't the city of a Margery Allingham or a Dorothy L. Sayers, it isn't portrayed gracious or glamorous or even very livable—and the weather is bloody. See it warts and all. The only bits I had trouble believing were when someone was in the car; it's never possible to drive traffic-free, to cruise around just looking for someone or something, or to find convenient places to park in the London I know, even with the new fines clearing out much of the center city.
What you do see is a city multicultural and inside a school system whose student body makes you wonder why anyone would become a teacher. The scriptwriters are convincingly cutting edge with kids although the housing projects looked cleaned up to me compared to blocks of flats I've viewed; I should take the trouble to find out what part of London, which is vast, is on offer. Greater London presumably, not the new Docklands or the West End. My bad for not checking.
Though presented in November, this isn't holiday viewing unless one takes it as a reminder to find the blessings in your own life, or to reevaluate choices. What it is is powerful, poignant, and fine storytelling, a splendid finish to prime viewing and the exit of an exceptional actress from a role that while not defining her talent—she has too many other successes for any one role to capture her—showcases it. Warts and all.
–Barbara Peters, The Poisoned Pen www.poisonedpen.com
Masterpiece Theatre "Prime Suspect 7" airs Sundays, Novenber 12 and 19, 2006 at 9 p.m. on Eight/KAET-TV.
