I wish many American TV shows would abide by that, as the British Prime Suspect creator Lynda La Plante has believed throughout a major career that has included, of course, giving Helen Mirren one of the greatest roles of her life.
La Plante doesn’t feed an audience everything they should know in the course of one season. In her series, bits of comedy aren’t forced in order to expand a scene. They come naturally from the characters and what a viewer may find funny comes from what they think of each character, what they come to know about them, not what a show tells them to remember about them, to appreciate about them. La Plante’s characters feel like they’ve come naturally. We meet them in the middle of work, in their lives. Their lives aren’t just beginning; they’re already in progress. See what you think about them and go on from there. If you like them, there’s a lot more to see.
Trial & Retribution: Set 5, yet another fine release from Acorn Media (that they keep doing it every time is a nice consistency in the DVD market), puts us squarely in the criminal investigation department of the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, made up of the boss, Detective Superintendent Mike Walker (David Hayman) who will chase down a suspect when he’s sure of their guilt, to sometimes unfortunate consequence, as in the feature-length episode “Rules of the Game,” and Detective Chief Inspector Roisin Connor (Victoria Smurfit), who is equally as determined as Mike, but more cautious than he is. She’s not as willingly confrontational as he is. The rest of the department is a collection of great and curious minds, all with their own issues and opinions, as you’d expect of such a gathering, and this is something that many procedural shows here in the United States can learn from: Either let an audience get to know main characters on their own terms, or if you must push, at least make them interesting. Give something that makes us want to know more.
La Plante never pushes, and her greatest allies are her actors. David Hayman gives Walker an expected world-weary look, but contrasts that with his dedication. He may be getting on in years in this department, but he’s not done yet, even as he chases a suspect that’s not the one who did it, even as he deals with his mother’s senile dementia. The man has resolve that’s remarkable in the face of everything he goes through.
The cases themselves, well, they’re everything we’ve come to expect from La Plante, with the reputation she’s built from Prime Suspect, and a host of other great crime shows in the United Kingdom. She never makes the solving of a case easy in order to please an audience. You have to pay attention. She and everyone else in Trial & Retribution aren’t cheap enough creatively to throw in a twist implicating spy agencies or the government, as would seem to be the path in “Rules of the Game.” These cases are not that big, although they are naturally very important to this department. This series knows how to deftly twist an episode, to present us with what we did not expect at all, to the extent that we have to pause the DVD to think, and then rewind it to watch again just to be sure that it happened and try to make sense of it, as it is with the end of “Rules of the Game.” We wonder how that’s possible, and we’ll eventually figure it out, but right now, whoa. Mind blown.
La Plante and her directors and cinematographers don’t strive to make a city look exaggerated, more vivid than it is. This is what I like best, that this is what London is, this is what goes on, and that’s all there is to it. Through that, the characters have room to do what they do, to pursue who they must, to mull over the complexities of a case without the city being such a distraction. There’s no overly jarring camerawork, nothing like anything in our varied CSI series.
I suppose American television can’t place the same level of trust in audiences here, what with the advertising dollars they pump into their shows to present in the Fall. They want viewers so badly, to cancel as few shows as possible, so they’ll do whatever they can to make that happen. I liked being able to choose my focus outside of the case, my favorite character being Walker for that determination. This department is simply there. La Plante trusts you to find your own pleasure, your reason for watching. That makes a viewer feel more valued. I wish there was an American series today like this. It takes time, and it’s worth every minute.
