Women in TV's police squad rooms were a rarity until Angie Dickinson slapped a badge on her chest as Sgt. Pepper Anderson in “Police Woman." But while Dickinson’s Sgt. Pepper proved to be a lonely heart’s club band, others followed.
“Cagney & Lacey” traced a powerful police duo on the job while the camera followed them home chronicling their lives. Sharon Gless was the foxy, single Cagney, Tyne Daly portrayed the dumpy married Lacey.
Betty Thomas held her own in a precinct crowded with men in the innovative “Hill Street Blues,” as did Barbara Anderson, a police detective in the original “Ironside.”
These female officers slowly began to infiltrate all divisions of law enforcement. Stepfanie Kramer held her own as the diminutive L.A. police detective with former Rams defensive end Fred Dryer in “Hunter.”
Over in fog-shrouded Britain, Sharon Small managed the same with the more highfalutin Inspector Lynley in “The Inspector Lynley Mysteries.”
“NYPD Blue” promoted many including Kim Delaney, Paige Turco, Charlotte Ross, Jacqueline Obradors, Andrea Thompson, and Amy Brenneman.
But it was really “Prime Suspect,” starring the great Helen Mirren, who excavated the true cost of such a demanding job on the women who choose it.
As Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, she was not only burdened by baffling cases, but had to deal with the good ol’ boy’ sneers in the squad room. Mirren admits a kinship to such challenges.
"What I've always done is change the rules in my life,” she tells me. “I've never particularly chosen the easy way.''
And for women in law enforcement, there are always hurdles to breach, she says. “The police force, like the army, is very hierarchical. And although there are many what you would call detectives, they’re not many detective chief inspectors, which is what my character was,” she says.
“And the whole problem with women in the police force in England – and as far as I understand it -- it’s exactly the same in America – is not so much entry into the police force but gaining the positions of power. And a detective chief inspector is a very high-up position in the police force. And that is what is difficult. Just to be a low-level detective is quite common, but to be a detective chief inspector..."
Two real female officers served as her inspiration, says Mirren.
“One woman in particular, a detective called Jackie Malton, was the prototype for Jane Tennison.
“But in my own personal research for the role, which I did fairly extensively -- more than I usually do -- I based my characterization on two women that I met. One was the head of the Holloway Police Station, which is a police station in a very rough area of London, and (the other) Jackie Malton. Those were the two women that I based my characterization on.”
Mirren’s Tennison became the progenitor of graphically realistic TV police women who prowled the gritty underworld of crime. Uncompromising shows like “Vera,” “Criminal Minds,” “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” “Law & Order”( in its various incarnations), “The Fall,” “Dexter,” “The Killing,” “The Closer,” “No Offence,” “Broadchurch” saw these cops in the trenches and often in command.
The latest to join the force is British actress Keeley Hawes, who’s played a police officer four times. In her newest assignment she portrays real-life Detective Chief Inspector Caroline Goode in BritBox’s series, “Honour,” which begins streaming Feb. 16.
Armed with a rumpled trench coat and an unattractive hairdo, Hawes sets out to unearth the killer of young Banaz Mahmod, an Iraqi-Kurdish woman who was murdered by her family when she became involved in a relationship they considered inappropriate.
“I think the police women that I’ve played – certainly here in the U.K. – have been high profile,” remarks Hawes. “Possibly those roles have stood out, but I'm always very pleased when I'm a police officer because their stories are always so interesting. I didn’t know anything about honor- based violence killing when I read the script. It was a real education for me to learn about that and to learn about the work that this incredible, tenacious woman has done on this case, and the impact she had and continues to have,” she says.
Hawes, who is married to actor Matthew Macfadyen and is the mother of three children, thinks her job as an actor marks a continuation of childhood pretending.
“We get to do that make-believe every day and we have the great luxury of being provided with all the props and the sets and the makeup and the costumes to make that make-believe world very accessible and real and there’s no greater fun than doing that.”
KINNAMAN RETURNS AS ASTRONAUT IN ‘FOR ALL MANKIND’
Joel Kinnaman has donned his spacesuit once more for Season Two of the Apple TV+ popular sci-fi series “For All Mankind.” Kinnaman, who was so good as the unorthodox cop in “The Killing,” says he thinks that science fiction fills a primal need in us.
“It lets us fantasize about what could happen in the future,” he says. “And, I think also we need to fantasize about these things. Because it also gives us ideas of how to get us there. And if you don't know where you're going, you have to at least fantasize about where it could end up being.”
Once the fantasy is there, the practicality follows, he says.
“When you start dreaming up a place to go or something that will take you there, then you start figuring out how would we actually make that happen in real life? And I think that's why science and science fiction has always gone hand in hand. And and I think that's why we also love seeing those kinds of stories.”
Kinnaman says when he was a kid he always experienced daydreams.
“I fantasized about a lot of things. I wanted to go into space. I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to be a policeman. I wanted to save my classmates from dangerous dragons and everything else. I just never grew up,” he laughs. “I loved playing pretend. And here, I never had to stop.”
STARLING BACK AS FBI AGENT IN CBS’ ‘CLARICE’
Who can forget FBI agent Clarice Starling staring down the horrible Hannibal Lecter in “Silence of the Lambs”? Well, that intrepid Clarice is back in a new TV series on CBS appropriately titled “Clarice,” and premiering Thursday.
The Aussie actress Rebecca Breeds plays Clarice, and the action takes place one year after the movie story ended. But as soon as the show was under way, COVID-19 struck. Breeds says it actually afforded her some time to ruminate about her new role.
“The audition process to getting the role took a week,” she says. “And then I was on a plane, and then I was here, and then it was ALL happening: There was FBI training and accent training, and off we go and on to the set. Then it (COVID-19) just gave us a moment to all go, ‘Oh, my gosh,’ and to really get our heads around the gravity of it.”[
But it also permitted her further access to research, she says.
“I had more time to study the book and really understand the character based on who Thomas Harris wrote. Who is she? How can I understand her more? And where can we go with this?. . . It was actually a really fantastic experience and really valuable for me just to really ground myself before I did go to set and end up bringing her to life.”
‘THE ROCK’ REVISITS CHILDHOOD IN NEW COMEDY
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is holding nothing back with his new show, “Young Rock,” premiering on NBC Feb. 16. The comedy is based on his colorful childhood growing up with a dad who was a professional wrestler and living for a time in Hawaii.
“My life, we use these terms ‘wild and crazy’ and those are great sizzle words we use as we promote this thing, but it was incredibly complicated and it was incredibly tough growing up,” he admits.
“The hardest time would probably be in that era of being 15 years old and starting around 13. Thirteen is when I started to veer off the tracks and do a lot of things that I shouldn’t have been doing. I started getting arrested at 13 in Hawaii. And the talk of us leaving Hawaii because times were too hard started coming up, and I was so adamantly against leaving the island at 14.
And I fought tooth-and-nail with my mom and my dad because I did not want to leave. Times were hard for us here (in Hawaii) and it became harder and harder for us to pay the rent. But I did not want to leave, and I really put my foot down, as best as a 14-year-old, punk kid could.
“And that’s when you want something so badly, then the universe steps in and we get evicted off the island. So we had no choice but to leave, which I always find is one of the most ironic things in life. It’s when you want something so badly and that thing you want to badly just doesn’t come true. Years later you realize that that’s actually the best thing that never happened.”
