Whistleblower: the difference class makes; Rachel Weisz heir to Helen Mirren’s Prime Suspect

Kathryn Bolkovac (Rachel Weisz) finding one of the girls fleeing in a wood I watched this film for the first time last night. It’s an important film which I hope more people saw than I fear did (I suspect it was not a mass entertainment even if it played in mainstream cinemas). It’s a kind […]

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Prime Suspect 7: Full Circle

Helen Mirren, final shots: walking quietly away from a lifetime of work Dear friends and readers, I have now watched this last mini-series (two episodes of well over an hour each) and found it did not disappoint. The final act shows Jane Tennison understandably faltering before her own need for companionship with a girl as […]

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Prime Suspect: Errors of Judgement (5); Last Witness (6): life from below

Hilen Mirren as Jane Tennison, around the time of Inner Circles and Errors of Judgement (1995-96), promotional or posed shot. Dear friends and readers, Another blog on the brilliant and uncloying Prime Suspect. I’ve just finished watching Prime Suspect Season 5 (Errors of Judgement) and 6 (The Last Witness). Although 7 years apart, the perspectives […]

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Prime Suspect: Jane Tennison’s evolving story & Inner Circles

Helen Mirren as Jane Tennison (Inner Circles) Dear friends and readers, My Christmas present from Jim and Izzy (bought by me on their behalf) was the complete set of Prime Suspect seasons, and while I was chuffed to get them, it was not until I opened the box three nights ago now and began to […]

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Prime Suspect: Lost Child & Scent of Darkness; Song of Lunch

Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) and Dr Patrick Schofield (Stuart Wilson), Scene of Darkness Dear friends and readers, A third blog on the unusually good police series, Prime Suspect: I’ve now watched The Lost Child, Scent of Darkness , which I want briefly to compare with Christopher Reid and Niall MacCormack’s Song of Lunch, a more […]

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Prime Suspect 2 & 3: The Walking Wounded

Jimmy Jackson (David Thewlis), Prime Suspect 3 Dear friends and readers, This blog may be read as a continuation of my blogs on Lynda LaPlante’s Prime Suspect (1), starring Helen Mirren, and “New hook-up culture another name for “old” casual encounter. In the first I showed the first mini-series was feminist, progressive, advanced ideas of […]

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Lynda La Plante’s Prime Suspect starring Helen Mirren

The young Helen Mirren as Marlene Dietrich Dear friends and readers, It’s not uncommon of me to do something at least ten years after everyone else, but twenty may be pushing it. At any rate, I finally watched Prime Suspect, Series 1 last week. It held me absorbed straight through no matter how late I […]

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Kenneth Johnston’s Unusual Suspects, Parts 4-6, Coda

There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall … Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising … I was a stage rebel, Orwell a true one — Cyril Connolly, The Enemies of Promise Isaac Cruickshank, Royal Extinguisher or Gulliver Putting out Patriots Dear Friends and […]

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Kenneth Johnston’s Unusual Suspects, Prologue, Parts 1-4

It was a misfortune to any man to have been born in the latter end of the last century … The flame of liberty, the light of intellect, was to be extinguished with the sword — or with slander, whose edge is sharper than the sword — Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age (1825), quoted […]

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Summer syllabus, OLLI at AU: The Heroine’s Journey

Catherine Morland (Felicity Jones) and Henry Tilney (J.J. Feilds) entering the realm of the ancient Abbey, crossing the bridge (2007 Granada/WBGH Northanger Abbey, scripted Andrew Davies) For a course at the Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at American University Day: 4 Tuesday mornings, 9-45-11:15 am online, Study Group 1620: The Heroine’s Journey Office located at 4400 […]

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