PBS (Sun., April 18 and 25, 9 p.m. ET)
She's 54, a single, driven. sleep-deprived career woman, and her bosses on London's Metropolitan Police force want her to retire after 30 years on the job. But Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison (smartly played by Helen Mirren) refuses to go quietly—or at all. Instead, she big-foots a younger male subordinate by taking over the homicide of a Bosnian woman whose tortured body was dumped at a London construction site. As usual, nothing goes well for Tennison. The twisty case, which involves a Serbian war criminal, is impeded by higher-ups and sabotaged by someone in Tennison's own ranks. Meanwhile, her rekindled romance with a journalist (Liam Cunningham) helping her track the killer appears tenuous at best. The pleasure comes from watching Mirren run the emotional gamut from self-pity to steely resolve to aching empathy for the victims of the genocide that Tennison uncovers.
MYSTERY
