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This article was published 06/08/2011 (5403 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BEVERLY HILLS — If you’re an actress in search of the most daunting challenge imaginable, you might want to try this: following in the footsteps of Dame Helen Mirren.

The acclaimed English actress has won an Oscar and an Emmy for her portrayals of two British monarchs named Elizabeth, starred in dozens of movies and stage productions on both sides of the Atlantic, remained an in-demand performer for more than 41/2 decades, and been invested as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by the real-life son of the most recent queen she portrayed onscreen.

In the midst of all those towering accomplishments, Mirren remains most identified with a single, genre-redefining TV role: Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, the central figure in the long-running British police drama Prime Suspect.

In seven short-run series spaced over 14 years, Mirren’s deftly layered portrayal of DCI Tennison rewrote the rules for lady cops on TV, mixing the usual on-the-job brilliance and determination (in a deeply hostile and sexist workplace) with previously unseen levels of personal conflict and addiction.

In short, Prime Suspect‘s Tennison was a one-of-a-kind creation — the sort of TV achievement that would be impossible to duplicate.

Well, then, step right up, Maria Bello, and explain what in the world you’re trying to pull off by starring in an Americanized version of Prime Suspect that premieres this fall on NBC.

“I’d seen (the original Prime Suspect) years ago, and I remember it being really dark,” Bello said recently during NBC’s portion of the U.S. networks’ semi-annual press tour in Los Angeles. “But when I read this script, it was such a different kind of show… because of its humour and the fact it’s modernized and set in New York City.

“We all agreed, in the beginning, not to make her a conventional cop. My favourite shows growing up were, like, Baretta and Kojak and Columbo, and they were all detectives that had a little weird thing, their own quirk. And we really haven’t seen a woman detective like that on (American) television.”

In the NBC reboot of Prime Suspect (which will also air on Global in Canada), Bello — best known for her TV-series work in ER and feature-film performances in The Cooler, A History of Violence and Grown Ups — plays NYPD homicide detective Jane Timoney, who, like Mirren’s Tennison, is faced not just with the grim business of investigating murders but also a daily struggle to overcome deep-rooted sexism in a hostile, male-dominated workplace.

Executive producer/writer Alexandra Cunningham said that even though much has changed in the 20 years since DCI Tennison first stared down a backward-thinking male co-worker, the sexism element still does exist in modern-day detective squads.

“Peter (Berg, also an executive producer on the series) and I went on a trip to New York when we were first doing the pilot, and you know, there are still a lot of squads in the NYPD where there are no females at all,” she said. “Even though it’s 2011 and there are way more female detectives than there used to be, in the first squad I took him to, there are no female detectives at all — there’s a squad lieutenant who’s a woman, but no (female) detectives.”

In the pilot of NBC’s Prime Suspect, the hostility toward Timoney is so overt and nasty that it literally takes the sudden death of a male colleague to create an opportunity for her to tackle a major case — a chain of events that allows Timoney to prove her skills as a cop but only deepens the boys’ club’s disdain for her.

If the series’ first episode is any indication, Bello is more than up to the task of making this new spin on Prime Suspect her own.

In fact, Bello and Cunningham revealed that their interpretation of the role has received the blessing of the Brit original’s creator, Lynda La Plante.

“I would read the letter I received from Lynda La Plante out loud to you guys, because I’m the kind of person who would read it out loud, but I can’t because it’s at the framer’s,” Cunningham said with a laugh. “She said she couldn’t be happier that Maria’s shouldering the character now… and that Maria reminds people of Helen Mirren in her strength and her complete lack of vanity.”

Bello, who in addition to being a single mom (to 10-year-old son Jackson Blue) has also been deeply involved in earthquake-relief efforts in Haiti since 2010, admitted that she wasn’t really looking for a TV-series commitment when this script came along.

“I was in a phase of being open and seeing where my life would take me, and this script landed on my desk and I said, ‘Nope, I’m not doing that — I love it, but no. It would take over my life and be 16 hours a day,'” she recalled. “I work in Haiti part time, and I have a 10-year-old. And then I heard from these (producers), ‘Come in and have a meeting. Just have a meeting.’ And I met with them, and I trusted that this was going to be different from any show I’ve done, from any show that my friends have done, that it was going to be collaborative and creative and there would be freedom in it and it wouldn’t take over my life completely. And they’ve stuck to their word, and that’s what the show has been and, I hope, will continue to be for a lot of years.”

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca