ITV announces Prime Suspect prequel, Tennison

ITV has announced it's commissioned a six-part Prime Suspect prequel series, Tennison.

Lynda La Plante will write the new series, about the life and career of the young Jane Tennison and her rise to the top of the Metropolitan Police.

ITV said Tennison would be set in 1970s Hackney where women police constables were being uneasily ‘integrated’ into the force.

Jane, 22, is a single-minded and ambitious probationary officer who is thrown in at the deep end when she's drawn into a brutal murder enquiry, and experiences first hand London’s violent criminal ganglands

 

Stylish and featuring a 70s music soundtrack, Tennison will also introduce Jane's family and get a strong sense of why her personal life and career developed the way it did.

The prequel has been devised by Lynda La Plante, who has written a book titled Tennison, to be published by Simon and Schuster in September.

 

Lynda said: “I have very much enjoyed writing the young Jane, creating her family background and the start of her career in the police force. I do hope my readers will enjoy meeting her in September and viewers in 2016.”

No word on who will play Jane Tennison, a character made internationally famous by Helen Mirren.

 

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.