Set at the height of the AIDS epidemic, this adaptation of Lynda La Plante's story is a potent assessment of just how vulnerable people were horrifically exploited in London in the early 1990s. Taking up her new post with the vice squad "DCI Tennison" (Helen Mirren) is charged with looking into the tragic death (in a fire) of young boy who turns out to have been a high-class rent boy. The investigation soon broadens as she encounters "Vera" (a striking effort from Peter Capaldi), "Jackson" (David Thewlis) and Ciarán Hinds (the sinister, almost malevolent Parker-Jones) and exposes a corrupt network of sexploitation that involves young men/boys and an establishment all too willing to turn a blind eye - or, indeed, to actively participate. David Drury has taken a gritty, punchy script and turned it into a compelling drama that shines a light on not just the seedier side of the sex industry, but also on bullying and gender issues that resonate even more profoundly thirty years later. Mirren has made the role her own, her strength of character dealing with her own team - frequently disdainful, homophobic or just plain disinterested as well as with the wonderfully odious Hinds is enthralling. Thewlis is great as the thuggish enforcer and there are a couple of really uncomfortable-to-watch cameos from Jonny Lee Miller and James Frain as victims of these atrocious abuses of trust and power. I don't know that it is my favourite of these, but it is certainly the most plausible in terms of depicting the brutal, thoughtless and shameless treatment of susceptible young men.
