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Abstract
This paper takes a revisionist look at the first episode of Prime Suspect (1991–2006)—hereafter known as Prime Suspect (1)— in what was to become a cycle of dramas, conceptualised, and in the first instance, written by Lynda La Plante, based upon the female Detective Chief Inspector character, Jane Tennison. Critical attention has hitherto tended to shift away from Brunsdon's (2000) ground-breaking work on Prime Suspect (1)'s “equal opportunities discourse” toward critiques which emphasise its noir, hardboiled and literary, traditions. The paper thus seeks to rehabilitate Prime Suspect (1)'s televisual—rather than derived—lineage, in an adapted form of dramatised documentary practice. By using insights drawn from Kristevan psychoanalytic analysis I undertake an analysis of the programme in order to demonstrate how the masculine police series drama genre may be not only intervened, but is ultimately deconstructed by, the abject female body.
Notes
1. “‘Blossoming once more.’ Angus Towler talks to scriptwriter Lynda La Plante who has come back into the limelight with the much acclaimed Prime Suspect,” The Stage and Television Today, May 2, 1991.
2. Kristeva (Citation1982, pp. 3–4).
3. (a) The “border,” (b) the mother-child relationship, and (c) the feminine body.
4. See also Brunsdon (Citation1998) and Eaton (Citation1995).
5. I am thinking here of that classic, Dixon of Dock Green (Citation1955), and Z Cars (Citation1962).
6. Melvyn CitationBragg interviews Lynda La Plante on The South Bank Show, LWT, London, 14 November, 1993.
7. It was in television that John Grierson prophesied documentary would find its true home.
8. A police officer for 30 years, Alison Halford failed to achieve the promotion she felt deserved so took her sexual discrimination case to the courts. In 2006 she joined the conservative party advising on policing and social justice matters.
9. See note 6.
10. Caughie (Citation2000, pp. 111) identifies the lineage of the television drama documentary in this article and also refers to the two “looks,” the “documentary look” and the “dramatic look,” later amended, respectively to the “look” and the “gaze.” “Whereas the dramatic look is cut into the narrative space, articulating it and us in the movement of the narrative, the documentary gaze stands outside, exploiting the ‘objectivity’ of the camera to constitute its object as ‘document’” (Caughie Citation2000).
11. Of course, now The Bill (post-2002) has assimilated to the soap narrative, in the interests of achieving an increased demographic: evidence of how cultural forms change.
12. Moyra, Marlow's common law wife did nail extensions which are traced to the victims.