Prime Suspect 2

People are compulsive liars, so finding grain of truth inside a lie is detective work.

DCI Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) demonstrates interrogation techniques with DS Robert Oswalde (Colin Salmon). She has a fling with him and breaks up. A skeleton is found buried in the yard of a home in a black community. Racial tension is high and the case uncovers dark secrets. D Supt Michael Kernan (John Benfield) recruits Oswalde to be the token black investigator on the case.

The chain-smoking is gone and so is the blatant sexism. There is racial politics instead. This is more in line with a police procedural and I like this case better than the first series. Colin Salmon is a terrific actor and has great acting chops to match Mirren. The whodunit aspect is good. Overall, it's a solid TV cop movie.

This one isn't written by La Plante and it shows. The cacophony of the station room is replaced by a hum. Things are more sorted, the plot details pointed to ostentatiously.

This one is about racism - about how racial tensions cause destruction all around. Many of the familiar faces from the first episode are back, but others are unfortunately gone.

This one goes on forever. All these episodes are four hours long but this one feels that long. Two hours through it and you'll expect an ending and then you'll check the clock and you're likely to yelp 'OMG another two hours?'

It's not bad - but it does drag. As all these stories, it's incredibly complex and intricately woven - and it will beat most television crime drama fare. But odds are at the end of the game you'll long for the return of La Plante.

DCI Jane Tennisson finds herself having a bit awkward case involving a body in decomposion for over 3 years. It is supposed to be a black girl living in the neighbourhood where she lived, abused by a white man. The story reveals some rasisim from the british policeman regarding the black neighbourhood. Also DCI Tennison finds herself with an affair with one of her colleague-detectives, who is also black. Hellen Mirren does a great job acting in the second part of this mini-series.

Television has never been considered "high art", but this 4-hour miniseries is about as close to that as you're going to find. When I first saw this series several years ago, I said it was the finest television miniseries I'd ever seen (so, longer-running series like I Claudius don't fall into this category). I recently saw it again, and I stand by my original opinion. Virtually every aspect of this series is exception and memorable -- an intricate, intriguing detective story, finely-drawn characters, subtle probing of psychological, social, and racial issues, remarkable acting, original and impressive cinematography, incredible editing, clear direction...even great costume design and an unforgettable musical score. This series was as riveting to me the second time I saw it as the first, and I constantly noticed many nuances and attention to detail which I missed the first time. This is a remarkable film, which stands up to repeated viewing and can be enjoyed on many levels. I can't recommend it enough. You won't be disappointed. (And I really don't engage in such hyperbole often...see some of my other reviews!)