Smoke

The new hit series Prime Suspect is a reboot of a crime drama already familiar to British television viewers. The strong female role is now played by Maria Bello in the U.S. version whereas Helen Mirren capably handled the rough and tumble female cop role in the original British version. We find out in the first few minutes exactly how not to approach Detective Timoney as she is simply not in the mood for small talk or flirting. Jane Timoney is a dedicated member of the NYPD and has plenty of "attitude". As with other female cop roles like Olivia Benson (played by Mariska Hargitay on Law & Order SVU), Mary Shannon of In Plain Sight, Kyra Sedgwick's Brenda Johnson from The Closer, and the original Police Woman herself, Angie Dickinson's Pepper Anderson the most difficult part of being a good looking female cop may be convincing others the can handle the job. So attitude goes a long way. Starring Maria Bello (ER, World Trade Center) who handle such cases as a raped and murdered woman after it happened in front of her small children. The case goes to her but is taken away by another detective who dies on the job, prompting her to demand it be returned to her. Aidan Quinn (Legends of the Fall, Nine Lives) is Lieutenant Kevin Sweeney who is often helpful to Jane.

Mike White's Golden Globe-winning anthology series moves to Thailand for Season 3, with Walton Goggins leading a new cast at a luxury resort. Streaming on Max.

Leverage TV Show is about a man named Nate Ford who works as an insurance investigator until his employer denies his sons medical claim and dies because of it. That is when Nate realizes he can't work for such a company and ends up unemployed and heading straight toward alcoholism. Then he gets hired by an aeronautics company to get back stolen information from a rival company. Nate is joined by four others; that are highly skilled in various areas such as an internet fraud specialist, an expert thief, a gifted con woman and a very talented "˜retrieval' specialist. Since each on them is use to being a solo act, they don't seem to want to work with one another. However, when their backs are up against the wall they need to pull together and do what they have to. Even once the job is done, they realize they are stronger together than apart and work together to take from the greedy and give to the poor. Leverage TV series shows us the modern day 'Robin Hoods' in action.

Gloria Sheppard (Ally Walker from Profiler, Sons of Anarchy) is a detective with the LAPD who has recently become a single mother to two young boys. As with several other female cop type roles currently running on television, Gloria is overloaded between her job and home life, and the men in her life are basically incompetent. She stays up late sewing costumes for her sons then is up bright and early doing her detective thing. Detective Sheppard currently lives with her younger brother, Davey (played by Chris Payne Gilbert from Dexter, Burn Notice) but he's not much help due to being a recovering drug addict and she doesn't trust him with anything more than minor tasks. Sheppard solves some spectacular cases with the assistance of her partner, detective Michelle Dulcett (Tisha Campbell-Martin from Everybody Hates Chris, All of Us). Reminiscent of (although not nearly as tough and outspoken) other TV characters like Brenda Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick) on The Closer, Body of Proof's Dr. Megan Hunt (Dana Delaney), and In Plain Sight's Mary Shannon (Mary McCormack) we see Detective Gloria Sheppard as a woman determined to do it all, with or without male companionship. And she does it well.

Nicole Kidman leads a murderous Nantucket wedding weekend in Netflix's addictive limited series about the dark secrets behind a wealthy family's picture-perfect facade. All episodes on Netflix.

Suranne Jones and Julie Delpy face off as the British PM and French president when a kidnapping and a blackmail plot collide in Netflix's political thriller. On Netflix.