Prime Suspect Lynda: I loathe the titillation on today’s TV crime shows
...YOU MEAN THIS SORT OF THING, LYNDA?
PRIME SUSPECT writer Lynda La Plante has attacked the ‘appalling’ levels of gratuitous sex and violence in modern TV crime dramas.
La Plante who produced some of the most successful detective shows on British TV, said she ‘loathed’ the way cheap titillation had replaced good old-fashioned storytelling.
Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday, the Baftawinning writer, 73, said she feared viewers and readers of crime fiction were becoming desensitised to extreme violence and sex.
She said: ‘It worries me greatly because there is gratuitous violence. Nudity, I am sick and tired of it. Sex, I am sick and tired of seeing that.
‘It seems as if you have to titillate a viewer – even a reader – to absolutely appalling proportions. It isn’t necessary.
‘The heart of good crime writing is to keep you on the edge of your seat, not sit back and go, “Ooh he’s sexy, ooh she’s having another man. I loathe it. The unreality of this. It doesn’t happen that way.’
La Plante, renowned for creating strong female characters in TV dramas such as Prime Suspect, Widows and Trial And Retribution, does not single out any programme or novel in her broadside.
But her comments coincide with the vigorous public debate about the levels of sex and violence in crime fiction and drama.
BBC2’s The Fall, which ended its three-year run on Friday, has faced strong criticism. It starred Gillian Anderson as Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson, who hunts down brutal rapist Paul Spector, played by Fifty Shades Of Grey actor Jamie Dornan. The last episode featured a savage attack on Gibson by Spector.
La Plante herself has been critical of The Fall in the past. In an interview with The Mail on Sunday last year she said: ‘You’ve got wonderful performances but it’s focused on the very handsome serial killer, what he eats, his sexual preferences – it’s glorying gore. What young actresses today are expected to do – sex scenes, violent scenes, rape scenes – in my mind it’s bordering on pornography and I feel deeply sorry they’re being forced into it.’
La Plante, who is now producing a series of novels and dramas based on the early life of her Prime Suspect character Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison – originally played on TV by Dame Helen Mirren – told the Today programme that her contacts with retired policewomen meant she was never short of ideas. She said: ‘They are an incredible group of ex-policewomen… they all feed me stories and then one goes click and sticks. Just one of them saying, “When I was a young officer I was used as a decoy for a prostitute who had been murdered… they gave me a coat and it stank of her perfume.” I was off.’ Last year, Sally Wainwright, the creator of hit TV dramas Scott And Bailey and Happy Valley, criticised The Fall’s depiction of violence against women and its voyeuristic obsession with DSI Gibson. She said: ‘Often violence against women is portrayed in a sexual way, which we certainly don’t do in Happy Valley. ‘I think The Fall was the worst culprit. I think that it’s misogynistic.’