Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Lessio.
Entertainment Weekly reports that NBC is planning a remake of Prime Suspect, though unsurprisingly (she's busy, people), Helen Mirren will not be reprising the title role. While I love Prime Suspect, and main character Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, I have essentially no idea how this translation will work for American audiences.
First, I have a difficult time understanding how they'll bring Tennison over to the United States. As I wrote in the post I linked to above,
Her alcoholism and her sex life are part of this tapestry, and the show deals with them that way: Jane Tennison is a talented and emotional detective who happens to drink too much, and who has an abortion at one point, not an exploration of abortion or alcoholism with police work as the Lifetime Movie Device of the Week. And that's the way life usually is: the hard stuff is part of life, not the sum total of it.Making Tennison the sum total of her damage would be a grievous error, and one I'm all too afraid the remake will fall into. I don't know that there are many American actresses who wear unpleasantness as easily, and as compellingly, as Mirren, and so I think it'll be difficult to find a strong actress to do the role however it's written. This isn't some story of a sweet little Georgia peach who turns out to have a soft candy center after she kicks ass. And unlike almost every other procedural, Prime Suspect, as a concept, rests on Tennison's shoulders. There are adversaries (notably DS Bill Otley within her own squadroom), there are members of her team, but there is never a partner, a coequal. And there wasn't much in the way of relationships, either. The actress will have to be phenomenal (Michael Ausiello has some ideas, though I'm afraid they may be tainted by his Connie Britton obsession), and so will the writing.
Second, the season arcs are going to be extremely difficult. Like The Wire, Prime Suspect focuses on a single major crime or criminal conspiracy each season (with one exception). But unlike The Wire, the investigation hews much closer to the original crime: there aren't major digressions into other crimes, just into the politics of the police station and into Tennison's personal life. In a way, Prime Suspect was the perfect fit for the BBC's system of limited-espisode series. It spins out a case that would be solved in an hour on Law & Order and digs into it, and the emotions surrounding it. And it works quite well. But that kind of extension isn't what mass American audiences are used to. Whether they'll have the patience for it, and whether the cases become a little less soapy seems entirely up in the air.
Finally, to expand those plot arcs, NBC will have to find some good subcultures for Tennison to have to learn to navigate. I'm not talking about the dips Bones takes into different worlds, but real, intractable social divides. My favorite Prime Suspect series is the second one, in which Tennison has to deal with the racial politics in an Afro-Caribbean immigrant neighborhood (while also failing at race relations in her personal life). Whether the show writers have the guts to have their new Tennison learn lessons like that is an open question. But I hope they do. It's one of the things that make the original show worth watching.
I realize I'm demanding something that sounds like a faithful recreation, and perhaps, unwisely, I am. But Prime Suspect is good for structural reasons, not simply because Helen Mirren was then, and always will be, astonishing. If NBC wants something genuinely fantastic, rather than just another procedural with a gal in the lead detective's slot, it'd be wise to understand what made the original work so well.
Update: In comments, GayAsXmas suggests Edie Falco. Brilliant.