Prime Suspect

Bello doesn't need to adapt to anyone else's role model (literally), because she's created her own strong, stand-alone character.

There's texture galore in this city-shot cop hour, eyed by handheld lenses echoing "Homicide's" edge (and director Peter Berg's "Friday Night Lights" intimacy).

If Jane Timoney continues to be an interesting character--and if the characters around her become three-dimensional enough to stand plausibly with or against her--then this could hearken back not only to the original "Prime Suspect," but "NYPD Blue," "Homicide," etc.

Fortunately, terrific performances all around quickly ground the tensions in character rather than theme.

Filled to the brim with good actors, from Aidan Quinn as Bello/Jane Timoney's boss to The Shield's Kenny Johnson as her boyfriend, Prime is overripe with hard-boiled detectives (and I love hard-boiled detective stories) and renders Jane not a feisty broad to admire, but rather a bullying pain in the ass you'd cross the street to avoid.

The show has to get beyond plot predictability and one-dimensional characterization if it's going to survive.

The only suspects of interest in this crime series are the producers and writers who threw this hapless business together and called it "Prime Suspect."