Television series
Prime Suspect
Prime Suspect is a slow, unglamorous police procedural built entirely around Helen Mirren's Jane Tennison, a DCI clawing through a murder case and a station full of men who'd rather she wasn't there. Feature-length episodes give it room to breathe: forensic detail, office politics, exhaustion. It's for anyone who wants their crime drama to feel like actual work, not a puzzle box.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you want a police procedural where the detective's battle with her own colleagues is as gripping as the case, and you're happy to sit with a patient, unflashy pace.
Skip it if you want a tidy whodunit with quick reveals and cheerful pacing; the subject is dark and the violence carries real weight, so it won't feel like escapism.
What it asks of you: Hold onto your patience: a slow, methodical build across a long run, with the grim material handled at a steady, unhurried pace rather than in bursts of shock.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Happy Valley2014
Sarah Lancashire plays a Yorkshire sergeant carrying her own grief while chasing a genuinely frightening villain; it has Tennison's unglamorous grind but adds a rawer, more personal ache underneath every scene.
But The violence lands close and personal rather than clinical — it can feel more emotionally exhausting than mysterious.
The Fall2013
Gillian Anderson's Stella Gibson is Tennison's cooler, more controlled cousin, hunting a killer whose perspective the show gives equal screen time — deliberately, uncomfortably.
But Spending so long inside the killer's routine unsettles some viewers more than it thrills them.
Cracker1993
Same era, same appetite for messy, self-destructive investigators — Robbie Coltrane's criminal psychologist is brilliant, drunk, and barely holding his life together while solving cases nobody else can.
But Its cases and attitudes are very of-their-decade; a couple of episodes have aged into genuine discomfort.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Prime Suspect
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Silence of the Lambs1991
Same year, same premise — a woman proving herself inside a hostile male institution while hunting a killer — but told as a two-hour horror film instead of a seven-hour series.
Clarice Starling walking into a room of FBI men who look through her rather than at her is the exact scene Prime Suspect built a series around — except here it's compressed into two unbearable hours.
But It's a horror-thriller with a genuinely monstrous villain — much more frightening, much less about paperwork and procedure.
More like this (8)
Mare of Easttown2021
Kate Winslet as a small-town Pennsylvania detective drowning in her own life while a case refuses to close — it borrows Tennison's exhausted realism and drags it into rural America.
But The accents and small-town texture are thick; some find the pace stubbornly slow in the middle stretch.
Broadchurch2013
A single murder tears apart a small coastal town over eight episodes, with the same patient, character-first approach to procedure that Prime Suspect pioneered decades earlier.
But It leans more melodrama and twist than Tennison's grounded institutional grind — less office politics, more secrets.
Line of Duty2012
If you loved watching Tennison fight her own colleagues as much as the case, this is that instinct turned up to eleven — an anti-corruption unit investigating the police itself.
But The plotting gets deliberately labyrinthine across seasons; casual viewers can lose the thread.
Luther2010
Idris Elba's detective is messier and more operatic than Tennison, but the loneliness of the job and the cost it exacts on a personal life feels like a direct descendant.
But It trades procedural realism for pulpy, near-supernatural villains — a very different flavour of crime drama.
Vera2011
Brenda Blethyn's rumpled Northumberland detective is Tennison decades on, still underestimated, still better than everyone around her, in a warmer, more forgiving show.
But It's gentler and more comfort-watch than confrontational — don't expect the same institutional bile.
Silent Witness1996
Swaps the detective's desk for the mortuary table but keeps the same fascination with procedure, evidence, and a woman proving herself in a room full of sceptical men.
But The forensic focus means less of Tennison's interpersonal, office-politics tension — it's a cooler, more clinical show.
Cagney & Lacey1982
The direct ancestor — the show that proved audiences would watch women carry a cop drama, done in a much lighter, more optimistic register than Tennison's grim slog.
A decade before Tennison, two women partnered on the NYPD dealt with exactly the same condescension, minus the prestige lighting — warmer, funnier, and genuinely groundbreaking for network television.
But It's studio-bound eighties TV with a laugh-adjacent rhythm; the crimes matter less than the friendship.
The Great Mouse Detective1986
Strips away the fiction entirely — same institutional grind, same gendered failures in how crimes against women get investigated, but this time it's not a performance.
A real Manchester police unit investigating sexual offences, following actual detectives doing the unglamorous, morally exhausting work Tennison's fiction was built to dramatise.
But It's nonfiction and unflinching about real victims — nothing here is shaped for satisfaction the way a drama's ending is.
People
Cast
Production
- Lynda La PlanteAssociate Producer
- Nicola ShindlerAssociate Producer
- Gub NealExecutive Producer
Recommended by
Happy Valley, MINDHUNTER, Between the Lines, Luther, Rizzoli & Isles, Ashes to Ashes, Cracker, Cagney & Lacey, The Closer, Vera, Marcella, Unforgotten, The Killing, Inspector Morse, Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1980, The Blame, A Touch of Frost, Wire in the Blood, Winter, Whitechapel, The Diplomat, The Bill, Taggart, The Sweeney, The Gentle Touch, The Offence, Appropriate Adult, Above Suspicion, Waking the Dead, Five Days, The Pale Horse, Maigret