A quick review of last night’s “Prime Suspect” coming up just as soon as I choose the clown fish…
As promised, “Carnivorous Sheep” largely ditched the He-Man Woman Haters Club tone of the pilot. Duffy, the Brian F. O’Byrne character still hates Jane, but overall the Jane Timoney vs. the World motif got toned down significantly. Duffy could still stand to be humanized – whatever his motives, right now he’s just a strawman villain to make Jane look better, smarter and more virtuous – but this was a step in the right direction.
What interested me most was the turn the story took, where the rescue of the missing girl became an afterthought to the way Duffy ruined the reformed pedophile’s life and drove him to suicide. There are so many police procedurals on now – and several of them in the vein of the original “Prime Suspect,” with hard-edged and/or unpopular heroines – that a well-told murder of kidnapping investigation doesn’t seem like enough anymore to stand out. “Prime Suspect” already has an uphill climb – ratings for the first week were terrible, and it’s only Robert Greenblatt’s reported patience that’s going to keep it around for a little bit. But embracing the notion of being a character-based procedural, and doing stories where the emotional impact of the case on the characters (whether the cops or the suspects) is more important than finding out whodunnit seems a smart way to go. And the rawness of the suicide scene felt very befitting of a Peter Berg-produced show.
I doubt “Prime Suspect” survives long-term, but this was promising after the pilot left me uncertain what the real show would look like.
What did everybody else think?