Prime Suspect

Prime Suspect won the 1991 BAFTA TV Award for Best Drama Serial over G.B.H., but four of the seven voting jury members later publicly stated they had actually voted for G.B.H. to win, creating a controversy over the result.

BAFTA chairman Richard Price claimed the ballot papers showing four votes for Prime Suspect and three for G.B.H. could not be recounted because they had since been destroyed.

Helen Mirren left the role after the first five series, produced annually from 1991 to 1996, reportedly to avoid being typecast, before returning to play Jane Tennison again in 2003 and 2006.

Series four to seven were co-produced with WGBH Boston for its Masterpiece Mystery anthology series, while the earlier series were produced solely by Granada Television for ITV.

The first five series were scored by Academy Award-winning composer Stephen Warbeck, who received a BAFTA TV Award nomination for his work on series one, while Nicholas Hooper won a BAFTA TV Award for his score on series seven.

In 1997, a spoof crossover episode called Prime Cracker was made for Comic Relief's Red Nose Day, featuring Helen Mirren and Robbie Coltrane reprising their roles from Prime Suspect and Cracker to parody both shows' seriousness.

The American series The Closer, starring Kyra Sedgwick, was widely described by critics as an unofficial Americanization of Prime Suspect, and Sedgwick herself acknowledged the show owed a debt to Prime Suspect and cited Jane Tennison as an inspiration for her character.

NBC produced an American adaptation of Prime Suspect for the 2011–2012 season, but it was cancelled after only 13 episodes.

A prequel series, Prime Suspect 1973, based on Lynda La Plante's novel Tennison, cast Stefanie Martini as a young 22-year-old Jane Tennison; the show began airing in March 2017 but was not renewed for a second series.