THE new drama series The Governor (Pearl, 9.30pm) is the latest from the Lynda La Pante school of women on top. Ms La Plante was the writer responsible for the early Prime Suspect episodes, in which the excellent Helen Mirren was given free reign to make men look like the weaker sex. This time it is Janet McTeer who kicks male butt, as the youngest woman prison governor in England (allegedly 33 years of age, but I'd put her closer to 40).
And kick it she does, without getting a fibre of her business suit dirty. She's ambitious and fearless, but carefully cast to have just enough sex appeal to make her believable. Ms McTeer is Audrey Hepburn with attitude.
From the remarkable opening seconds of The Governor, when prison cells explode to the sound of Turandot being played by one of the inmates, it is clear that Ms La Plante has not strayed far from Prime Suspect territory. Ms McTeer is handed the job of governor at a prison torn apart by riots. The prison officers are all men, all overweight, all cantankerous, and all anxious to see their new boss trip on her high heels. The prisoners, ready for another riot at the slightest provocation, also fail to roll out the red carpet. The closest Ms McTeer gets to a welcome is 'are you a dyke then?' Yet the woman on top issue is really a bit of a red herring. Behind Ms McTeer's doe-eyes there is a real actress bursting to get out. And underneath the feminism is a good story, about an inmate who allegedly committed suicide in his cell, but managed to make a spectacular mess while doing so. 'If he committed suicide, he must have been a bloody contortionist,' says Ms McTeer. Only British investigators, it seems, are capable of recording a verdict of suicide on a man with half a dozen stab wounds in his chest.
So Ms McTeer is up against it. She knows the inmate was murdered. The prison officers not only know it, but know who did it.
The Governor was written by Ms La Plante with the full co-operation of the prison service, which gives it great authenticity. ER was written with help from a highly-paid team of medical advisers, yet it ceases to be authentic because it tries to do too much.
It's an important lesson; where ER struts its stuff like a pop video in white coats, The Governor just tries to get on with the story.