NBC's 'Prime Suspect' Reinvents ITV's Restrained Jane

There is one thing that kept the series premiere of Prime Suspect from descending into mediocrity: Maria Bello.Never before have I watched someone who wanted something so badly. Bello, as Jane Timoney, is able to keep up with the boys and beat them at their own game of being a detective in New York City.
Hayden: It is impossible to talk about Prime Suspect without mentioning the original, the phenomenal British series about the difficulties and bitter triumphs of Detective Inspector Jane Tennison, played by Helen Mirren off and on for some 15 years. The original series (which, as I’m sure you know, is Britspeak for “season”) ran for two 100-minute episodes in 1991, in which we met Tennison and witnessed her struggle to be accepted as legitimate homicide police in face of institutional sexism. Many procedurals that followed Prime Suspect owed it a debt, especially the darker ones with tough-but-flawed female protagonists, such as The Closer. However, despite the debt, those were different shows. Tonight we have the debut of the Americanized version, a show that dares to use the same name and invite comparisons to the mostly unimpeachable original. In short, it has a lot to do to earn its name. Unfortunately, it is only about halfway there.
Americanized versions of British shows generally run into large problems right away. Since British TV series are usually scoped to have longer episodes and fewer of them per season, the Americanized versions tend to cram a lot of information and recycled plot points into the first few episodes, after which they either learn to swim by themselves or drown like dogs. The Prime Suspect pilot does not break this mold, shoving major points from the 200-minutes of the original Prime Suspect series into its 45 minutes of running time. This adaptation, stuffed though it might be, is handled reasonably well, surprisingly. Maria Bello’s Jane Timoney, the American counterpart of Tennison, is believably angry and brittle. Her colleagues in the original were working-class Londoners, and the best available translation is likely obnoxious Staten Island guys. There are more signs of intelligence at work in the writing, which is promising for future episodes. Another positive sign is the presence of the creator of the original series, Lynda La Plante, as one of the many executive producers. The presence of Peter Berg, who executive-produces and directs the pilot, is a bit more concerning, because we don’t know if we’re getting Peter “Friday Night Lights” Berg or Peter “Battleship: The Movie” Berg. The presence of Alexandra Cunningham, who is best known for foisting more episodes of Desperate Housewives upon an unsuspecting public, cannot be a good sign.