Lynda La Plante - Screenwriter

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Lynda La Plante is a British screenwriter and former actress, her work includes Prime Suspect and Above Suspicion. She has written many novels and screenplays including Widows which became one of the highest rating series of the 1980's. Before becoming a screen writer, she originally trained as an actress, working with the Royal Shakespeare Company and starring in popular shows such as The Sweeny and The Professionals.


PRIME SUSPECT
La Plante started working on Prime Suspect in 1990, a police drama set in the Metropolitan Police Service. Starring Helen Mirren who plays protagonist Jane Tennison, a female Detective Chief Inspector who has to deal with sexism in her workplace while trying to rise up the ranks. Series 1 was released in 1991 and La Plante soon wrote series 2 of the  popular show which became a hit. 
 

This video shows Lynda La Plante talking about where her main character in Prime Suspect came from. She says in the interview that she doesn't know where the character Jane Tennison came from as she was so focused on where the character was going rather than where she had come from. I feel like this is similar to my characters when I was in the preproduction stages of my script. I knew where I wanted my characters to end up and had planned their journey before thing about where they had come from. 

I enjoy La Plantes work and like the shows Prime Suspect and Above Suspicion. I listened to the dialogue in some of the first episodes of Prime Suspect and liked the way the protagonist Jane Tennisons dialogue was very strong and made her character stand out from the beginning. 

I chose to research Lynda La Plante and her work because my project is a crime drama and I felt that looking into Prime Suspect would help me to make my realistic. I liked that La Plante wrote Jane Tennison as such a strong and powerful female character and wanted to do something similar in my script. Watching the show helped me with some of the technical terms the detectives might use and how to make my characters stand out from the beginning.

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