NBC’s thoroughly necessary, Peter Berg-produced remake of Prime Suspect has found its replacement Helen Mirren in Maria Bello, who will provide a comfortingly American version of Mirren’s coarse Cockney bray that has for so long made the original series impenetrable to Stateside audiences. The brassy, no-nonsense, and other words that suggest she’s hot but also kind of intimidating Bello will star as a similarly tough female detective in a New York precinct dominated by men, and which exists in an alternate universe not currently flooded with television shows about tough female detectives who tend to routinely make fools of the men who believe they dominate their precincts. Bello clearly has her own off-screen challenges to overcome in filling in for Mirren, who we like to imagine is heading over to Bello’s house right now for a bit of hazing.
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