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Dom Robinson reviews
Granada Media
- Cert:
- Cat.no: GVD 096
- Running time: 195 minutes
- Year: 2003
- Pressing: 2004
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 29 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Pro Logic)
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: None
- Widescreen: 1.78:1 (16:9)
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £14.99
- Extras: Cast and crew interviews
Director:
- Tom Hooper
(Red Dust, TV: Cold Feet, Daniel Deronda, Eastenders, Love in a Cold Climate, Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness)
Producer:
- David Boulter
Screenplay:
- Peter Berry
Music :
- Robert Lane
Cast :
- Det. Supt. Jane Tennison: Helen Mirren
Milan Lukic: Oleg Menshikov
DCI Simon Finch: Ben Miles
DS Alun Simms: Robert Pugh
Jasmina: Ingeborga Dapkunaite
Elizabeth Lukic: Clare Holman
Det. Chief Supt. Larry Hall: Mark Strong
Robert West: Liam Cunningham
Zigic: Velibor Topic
DC Michael Phillips: Barnaby Kay
DC Lorna Greaves: Tanya Moodie
Arnold Tennison: Frank Finlay
Shaw: Phoebe Nicholls
Kasim: Rad Lazar
It took seven years before Jane Tennison returned to our screens,after 1996’s fifth installment, Errors of Judgment, and the first thingto notice in Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness is that thecharacter adeptly portrayed by Helen Mirren has been promoted fromSuperintendent to Detective Superintendent, but as she comes up for a reviewand is given the chance of early retirement, she shuns that in favour of sloggingon with the same old shitty job of clearing up after scumbags, and she stillcan’t quit smoking.
Personally, I lost track a bit with this series. I watched the first two dramasand enjoyed them, but the third rather lost the plot a bit and as they werebeing churned out at the rate of nearly one a year I had other things to do.However, after the praise heaped on this latest two-part drama, and given thetime passed since I last watched the then-DCI, I figured it was worth anothergo.
The best way to approach a drama like this is to know as little about it aspossible, so I’ll be brief so as not to spoil anything vital. As the dramabegins, Jane Tennison is called upon to head a squad to investigate thebrutal torture and murder of a an East European young woman in her 20s, foundin the grounds of a house that’s about to be renovated (sadly, it’s not LindaBarker appearing here!), and the prime suspect in this case is man calledZigic (Velibor Topic), who’s tall, bald, looks like the kind of thugwho could knock the East-end Mitchell brothers over with a feather and sohe’s gotta be guilty… isn’t he?
Over the course of the next 3+ hours, which was filled with adverts to makea round four-hour drama, so I’m glad I waited for the DVD – although the wayITV’s going at the moment with either one or zero real adverts during prime-timeprogramming, interspersed with their own “Hey, why not advertise on ITV!?”promos (because no-one’s watching after they’ve filled the schedules withreality tripe and repeats of Morse, and they treat films worse than Saddamtreated the Iraqis?), it might not have been so bad after all – but I digress,and over the time, Tennison, played by Mirren looking decidedly fed up andtired, has to solve the crime with the help of her colleagues while protectingthe victim’s older sister, Jasmina (Ingeborga Dapkunaite, who I’ve onlyseen previously in 1996’sMission: Impossiblemovie.
The rest of the principal cast is fleshed out with basic stereotypes: Coupling‘sBen Miles plays the young new DCI, given the personality of a wimp asif he’s not cut out for the job and just riding on daddy’s coat tails, Welshactor Robert Pugh is DS Alun Simms, the Welsh guy given the casual, butracist, role, but at least he’s not trying a stilted American accent like hedid (badly) in one of the worst of the Hustle episodes, and TanyaMoodie is DC Lorna Greaves, the achetypal single-mum with two kids whomight not be the most reliable officer for an intense and lengthy murder hunt,but because of this you know she’s going to end up showing up Helen Mirren bypulling a rabbit out of the hat at some point.
Also joining in, are optician-cum-translator Milan Lukic (Oleg Menshikov)and his wife Elizabeth (Clare Holman), along with Liam Cunninghamas a friend of Jane’s and the poutingly-sexy Phoebe Nicholls with thesole moniker of Shaw, which doesn’t seem particularly dignified but I supposethe writer knew what he was doing. Then again, by the end of it you realisehe didn’t do a great deal with her character so he probably didn’t know, afterall.
Helen Mirren turns in a good performance as always, and the cast work welltogether as best they can with the material, but it’s still formulaic stuffand nothing particularly outstanding. It’ll comfortably pass an evening, andthe entire two parts are played out in one long title on the DVD, so you won’tfeel cheated with your time but you won’t feel like it was earth-shatteringlydifferent from anything else. Then again, I watched this over the Easterweekend and the output from all the terrestrial channels was pitifully badso there wasn’t much option.
Overall, if you’re interested in finding out how Jane Tennison is gettingon then give it a rental, but chances are it’ll probably get a repeat duringthe summer anyway as there’s nothing else on.
The picture is filmed in the standard 16:9 anamorphic widescreen, with acamera style often used to make it look as if you’re viewing througha front door peephole and the Pro Logic surround soundtrack holds no surprisesnor has anything to make it stand out.
The sole extra is a 23-minute piece of interview snippets with principalmembers of the cast and crew mixed in with clips from the programme, allrepeating a lot of information that you know already. Still, it wasn’t thekind of supplemental material that was designed to be watched twice.
The film contains 29 chapters, the latter for the closing credits, there areno subtitles and the menus are static and silent.
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.