I made the mistake of flipping around the channels while traveling on business and catching Maria Bello running through a park hacking up a lung (she’s trying to quit smoking). I can’t remember seeing her in anything except for Assault on Precinct Thirteen (2005, bit part). In retrospect, the show, Prime Suspect, wasn’t a mistake. It was a decent cop show.
It’s a New York cop show with a strong woman character. She’s tough and smart. They throw plenty of The Black Keys playing in the background to highlight how gritty she is. She just got transferred to homicide but the guys hate her because she slept with her boss right before she got transferred. Then one of the guys has a heart attack and dies, so she gets the big case.
The guys hate her more.
Then she gets beat up by the perp and wraps up the case nicely. The guys still, invariably, don’t like her. Oh well.
The hat, it’s gotta go.
I’m probably coming off as a crime fiction snob. I have The Wire – Season 3 on one side and Kinsey Millhone (dropping November) on the other side. With all that, I can’t get too fired up about a show I know that I won’t watch, even though I thought it was good.
This show has some serious roots though. It’s based on a very popular 1990s British crime drama of the same name starring Helen Mirren. I’ve never seen nor heard of it, but I’m assuming Maria Bello has some big shoes to fill. I’ll keep an eye on the reviews and maybe catch it in a few years.