Christopher Menaul’s strongest claim on our attention is patient, actor-led television. In Prime Suspect, he helps make the awkward business of getting people to cooperate as absorbing as the investigation itself.
Fi1m perspective
In Prime Suspect (1991), getting useful information means dealing with people who resent being asked for it. Christopher Menaul directed the first two episodes, and the programme’s awkward working conversations give us a clear reason to value his approach. Helen Mirren’s Jane Tennison is difficult and compelling, without either quality being softened for comfort. We felt the strain of those exchanges because cooperation never seemed something she could simply expect. The patience with the actors makes the police work absorbing.
Before Prime Suspect, he worked in episodic television, including The Sweeney (1976–1978) and Minder (1980–1986). The move into television films and longer adaptations brought Fatherland (1994) and The Forsyte Saga (2002). Crime remained a substantial part of the work, rather than a phase left behind. See No Evil: The Moors Murders (2006) called for particular care with difficult material, and his restrained treatment is a virtue.
Prime Suspect also makes it difficult to separate the director’s contribution from the performers’, which is no bad thing. Nicholas Hooper’s music is secondary to the discomfort supplied by the acting. We are kept watching by the effort of people trying to establish something while having to deal with one another. There is pleasure in seeing a director trust that effort, rather than treating a conversation as a pause before the next event. It suits the procedurally detailed crime drama to which Menaul has often returned.
That is a stronger basis for recommending him than a claim that everything bearing his name is equally rewarding. His occasional feature work includes Feast of July (1995) and Summer in February (2013), the latter receiving mixed notices. Nor is Prime Suspect beyond criticism: some later cases push their social concerns too hard, though that reservation concerns the wider programme rather than constituting a verdict on Menaul’s two episodes. Start with those episodes for the cast and the difficult business of getting people to work together.
Biography
Christopher Menaul (born 25 July 1944) is a British film and television director and writer. Active since the late 1970s, he has directed numerous episodic television series and television films, as well as several feature films.
His credits include directing two episodes of the miniseries Prime Suspect (1991), for which he received a BAFTA TV Award, the television films Fatherland (1994) and See No Evil: The Moors Murders (2006), and the feature films Feast of July (1995), Summer in February (2013) and Another Mother's Son (2017). He has also directed episodes of series such as The Forsyte Saga (2002), Zen (2011), Ripper Street (2012) and Chasing Shadows (2014).
