It seems ironic to be writing about a television show that deals with the issue of the glass ceiling women run into in the professional world when the same glass ceiling exists for female actors. Look around and tell me how many really good roles there are for women in film or television that aren't dependent on their looks and or age. How well a woman fills a t-shirt or a bikini on the screen seems to be more important than how well she can create a character or whether she can deliver a line convincingly.
While there has been some progress made in the past few years, you've still less chance of seeing Dame Judi Dench showing up on your television screen than you do the latest bimbo from the pop charts. Even when they do create roles for women, the tendency is to pick a successful type and stick to it. How many more series are we going to see featuring a driven woman who so desperate to succeed in her career that she has no personal life, or even worse has made a right hash of it? Not only has she had to struggle to survive in a "man's world," but there's always at least one man bitterly resentful of her position and determined to bring her down if its the last thing he does.
If I were to tell you the above scenario applied to a British television series focused on the trials and tribulations of a senior police officer whose personal life tends to spill over into her work, your first guess would probably be the former Helen Mirren vehicle Prime Suspect. Well, you wouldn't be too far off, because The Commander comes from the pen of the same person, Lynda La Plante. Acorn Media has released a box set of The Commander: Set 1 with four DVDs each containing an entire episode.
Amanda Burton plays forty-something Commander Clare Blake who, after twenty years on the force, has risen to become the highest ranking woman in New Scotland Yard, the Serious Crime Group Commander and head of the Murder Review Team. Under normal circumstances both these jobs would be considered high profile and high pressure, but with her being the first woman to ever hold either position the ante is upped even higher. Not only does she have to deal with the public scrutiny that comes with the job, there are those within the force who can't wait for her to slip up and are constantly eying her every move on and off the job.
Article comments
1 - Bryan McKay
Great review, Richard. You make some very salient points. There is a comic strip by Alison Bechdel that establishes a rule for sexism in movies: "It has to have at least two women in it, who talk to each other about something besides a man." It sounds like The Commander falls more than a bit short of these expectations when the main conflict hinges upon a (very unlikely) relationship with a man!