- Network: NBC
- Series Premiere Date: Sep 22, 2011
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Critic Reviews
- Critic score
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- By date
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The show sometimes lays on the misogyny a bit thick, but Timoney's alienation feels painfully realistic, thanks to Bello.
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Bello doesn't need to adapt to anyone else's role model (literally), because she's created her own strong, stand-alone character.
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It's arresting and criminally entertaining.
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The best new crime drama of the fall season doesn't necessarily have to be an original idea. It just has to have the right people in place.
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There's texture galore in this city-shot cop hour, eyed by handheld lenses echoing "Homicide's" edge (and director Peter Berg's "Friday Night Lights" intimacy).
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Bello's performance as the weather-beaten Timoney, swabbing her emotional scars with alcohol, nicotine and invective, is easily the highlight of the fall television season.
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[Bello's] sour, tough intelligence is right on the money. [3 Oct 2011, p.45]
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Thanks to the rock solid performances of Bello, O'Byrne and co-stars that include Kirk Acevedo, Kenny Johnson and Chicago homeboys Tim Griffin and Aidan Quinn, Prime Suspect rises above the formula network procedurals that focus more on forensics than good, old-fashioned grunt detective work.
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If Jane Timoney continues to be an interesting character--and if the characters around her become three-dimensional enough to stand plausibly with or against her--then this could hearken back not only to the original "Prime Suspect," but "NYPD Blue," "Homicide," etc.
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This is a million miles from PBS and Mirren, but it works because of Bello's visceral energy.
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Not great, but good, and promising.
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It feels awfully dated, except when Bello takes matters in her own hands to keep things fresh.
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Fortunately, terrific performances all around quickly ground the tensions in character rather than theme.
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This Jane is not as morally spent and self-interested as Ms. Mirren's character, but she has an unusual and appealing roughness around the edges.
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Prime Suspect improves as the hour goes on. The guys' attitude toward Jane evolves.
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Surrounded by a solid supporting cast, it's a workable if not quite prime piece of development.
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While some of the best dramas can dovetail a character's work and personal lives, Prime Suspect might be better off, at least in the beginning, focusing on solving the weekly case.
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Filled to the brim with good actors, from Aidan Quinn as Bello/Jane Timoney's boss to The Shield's Kenny Johnson as her boyfriend, Prime is overripe with hard-boiled detectives (and I love hard-boiled detective stories) and renders Jane not a feisty broad to admire, but rather a bullying pain in the ass you'd cross the street to avoid.
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You should at the very least check out Bello, who does fine work here.
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It doesn't yet feel like just another cop show.
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If you're looking for subtle, Prime Suspect will not become your appointment television. On the other hand, if you're looking for an intense police drama that suggests women face brutal obstacles in the police world, Maria Bello's Jane Timoney keeps the pedal to that metal.
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Parts of the show seem archaic, more Life on Mars than life in a 21st century police department. Other parts seem careless bricolage.
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The show has to get beyond plot predictability and one-dimensional characterization if it's going to survive.
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Give Maria Bello credit, if you like, for having the courage to take on a character so indelibly linked to one of the great actors of our time, Helen Mirren--and then take it away for the ridiculously behatted mash she and the show have made of the character.
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Maria Bello was convinced to star as Det. Jane Timoney, bravely attempting to make up for a so-so script by donning a fedora and laying things on about 10 times too thick.
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The only suspects of interest in this crime series are the producers and writers who threw this hapless business together and called it "Prime Suspect."
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 38 out of 49
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Mixed: 8 out of 49
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Negative: 3 out of 49
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Nov 23, 2011
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Nov 15, 2011
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Oct 27, 2011