Progress Note:
Tennison’s Challenge
12 July 2018
We’ve been watching the original British productions of Prime Suspect, the series in which Helen Mirren plays a police detective, Jane Tennison. Although loaded with conventional excitement, the series was notable for dramatising a smart woman’s struggle to command a squad of more or less sexist men — men who, at the very least, are unfamiliar with women who give orders.
Twenty years on and more, it’s still all of that, but much more bitter, because it brings home how little has changed.
The fourth episode of Prime Suspect actually comprises three entirely separate cases. At the end of the third, we find Tennison, newly re-instated after an insubordination-inspired suspension — needless to say, her insubordination was provoked by her colleagues’ disinclination to respect her achievements — dancing with a mortal enemy, Superintendant David Thordike. Chief Superintendant Mike Kernan has just expressed his happiness at seeing the two foes making nice. Thorndike returns to his table saying, “No hard feelings, certainly not on my part.” The sniggering of the other officers at his table betray the double entendre of this remark — no stiffy — whereupon Tennison sprays them all with her drink.
We didn’t say to ourselves, “How long ago that sort of thing seems.”