Prime Suspect 2 (1992)

Jane Tennison finds herself assigned to a difficult case when a body is found in a garden of a house on an Afro Caribbean estate in London. It's believed to be the body of a missing teenager, whose boyfriend was jailed for her murder. But the team are thrown when the body turns out to be that of another, unknown girl. Further complications for Tennison appear in the introduction of a black officer to the case, DS Bob Oswald, who she had a brief affair with. As they try to figure out the identity of the dead girl, they trace back the previous occupants of the house in the 1980's. But their chief suspect turns out to be dying, and Tennison is not convinced in a case full of likely suspects... Starring Helen Mirren, Colin Salmon, Craig Fairbass, John Benfield, Jack Ellis, Richard Hawley, Philip Wright, Ian Fitzgibbon, Andrew Tiernan, Lloyd McGuire, Stephen Boxer, George Harris, Fraser James, Ashley James, Junior Laniyan, Jenny Jules, Tom Watson, June Watson, Matt Bardock, Nina Sosanya, Josephine Melville, Claire Benedict, Stefan Kalipha, Dev Sagoo, Shireen Shah, David Ryall, Michael Fitzgerald, Adrian Schiller, Dinah Stabb, Caroline Loncq, Sidney Cole, James Durrell and Anna Lorimer. This was the 2nd of the Prime Suspect mysteries, originally shown on TV in 2 parts but my version is the feature length version where the two episodes have just been joined together. It was originally broadcast on December 15th 1992, and in an interview in 2006 Mirren said she queried to the writers the likelihood of finding a body buried in a house, only for months later the Cromwell Street murders to hit the news. This is a dark and unnerving mystery which manages to address racial problems back then with an even hand that is rare among today's dramas. It does drag in the 2nd half at times, but it remains an absorbing and somewhat disturbing mystery. Please note that this contains swearing, violence, a sex scene and brief nudity.