Painted Lady (TV series)

Painted Lady is a 1997 murder mystery drama starring Helen Mirren, involving art theft.

The role was created specifically for Mirren, as a means for her to try something a bit different from her Inspector Tennison character on the popular Prime Suspect series.

Maggie Sheridan, a washed-up blues vocalist from the 1960s who had long since stopped performing, had settled into a comfortable life on the Dublin estate of Sir Charles Stafford, the father of her childhood friend.

The story centres around Judith Beheading Holofernes, the masterwork of Artemisia Gentileschi, who was a 17th-century female Italian painter who survived a rape.

The painting fictionally travels to Dublin and New York City, and Gentileschi's tragic story eventually figures into the plot.