Inspector Tennison Returns in Some ‘Prime’ Viewing

It’s time for the night crawlers in London’s Soho district. So. . . .

A ravishing female impersonator named Vera sings “Falling in Love Again” in husky Marlene Dietrich style to a rapt crowd in a gay bar.

A teen-aged boy is roughed up.

A spotlight transforms the bodice of Vera’s slinky, white-sequined gown into a shimmery, phosphorescent glow.

A black-charred corpse is discovered in the ashes of a burned-out flat.

“Prime Suspect 3” opens with a fast-cutting juxtaposition of these incongruent scenes that rub against one another like sandpaper, then has the most interesting cop on television--Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison--spend the next four hours methodically exposing their film noir common denominators.

Yes, happy nights are here again. That annual PBS highlight, Helen Mirren, returns to “Mystery!” on Thursday as the irresistibly driven, tightly coiled, tenacious, despotic protagonist of another “Prime Suspect” four-parter from Britain’s Granada Television. Lynda La Plante’s “Prime Suspect 3,” although not quite the equal of last season’s brilliantly tangled “Prime Suspect 2” (written by Allan Cubitt), is tingling, head-turning, rip-roaring television that leaves you ravenously awaiting the next course. Please let there be a “Prime Suspect 4.”

Also written by La Plante, 1992’s original “Prime Suspect” concluded with Tennison out-bullying her sexist male colleagues only to wind up thwarted by the not-guilty plea of a serial killer from whom she had skillfully wrung a confession. Frustration also dogged Tennison in “Prime Suspect 2,” which ended with her solving a grisly slaying through brilliant sleuthing, yet being denied a promotion because of a careless fling she had with one of her own men. Honoring tradition, Tennison III also mingles triumph and disappointment.

“Prime Suspect 3” opens with Tennison again an outsider and an irritant to her old-boy superiors, having just been bumped from homicide to the Soho vice squad where, despite being so new she can’t even locate the coffee machine, she aggressively heads an investigation into the death of a 15-year-old male prostitute. A jangle of flaws as well as talent, she remains brusque and strident, the sort of boss--or “guv,” as the Brits say it--who sweeps into a room full of detectives barking orders. “Open the window! Shut the door!”

“Oh, shut up, Jane,” you sometimes want to tell her, even though the humanizing kinks in Tennison’s character are a big part of her appeal. Hardly a candidate for a pedestal, she plays ruthless office politics as a way of navigating her career around the cesspools. She’s still trying to kick her nicotine habit by chomping on gum as a big cat would a gazelle. And, as always, her antennae take in everything.

Inevitably, there’s much to take in, including the twisted jabs of her old nemesis from the original “Prime Suspect,” the resentful, Machiavellian Sgt. Bill Otley (Tom Bell). Like competing predators, these old foes warily tolerate each other.

A bombshell will rock Tennison’s personal life at the end of the first episode, showing a bit of her private, softer side. Yet just as sexism and racism were the volatile undercurrents of “Prime Suspect” and “Prime Suspect 2,” respectively, pedophilia and homophobia are dominant themes in “Prime Suspect 3.”

The hazy outlines of an apparent cover-up begin to appear through the tantalizing smokiness of La Plante’s teleplay, as Tennison’s superiors mysteriously deploy a mole to spy on her and stop her investigation from expanding. She settles on the villainous James Jackson (David Thewlis) as a suspect while aiming suspicious side glances at Edward Parker-Jones (Ciaran Hinds), the saintly operator of a halfway house for the kind of young runaways who Jackson turns to prostitution.

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In some ways, “Prime Suspect 3” lacks the subtlety of its predecessors. The mole, by publicly hobnobbing with those who sent him, all but announces himself to Tennison, for example. And given her record as a troublemaker, Tennison’s posting to this troubled, high-visibility vice unit is itself somewhat of a no-brainer. If her bosses wish to isolate her, why do they send her here? Moreover, there’s little in “Prime Suspect 3” to match the smoldering racial volatility (especially the white Tennison’s affair with a black detective and his subsequent abuse of a black suspect) that made “Prime Suspect 2” so hot to the touch.

What “Prime Suspect 3” offers in abundance, though, are striking sequences from director David Drury, whose ominous, dark-shrouded Soho streets are populated by the Fagin-like Jackson and his grimy, corrupted children of the night in scenes right out of Dickens. Drury also is relentless with his lingering tight shots, using them with meticulous skill, for example, while looking through Mirren’s eyes as if they were keyholes and exploring the delicate nuances of her face as one would trace the intricate lines on a map.

This time, following the winding trail of a perpetrator known as the “keeper of souls,” Mirren is again extraordinary as Tennison. In conjunction with La Plante and others, she has made Tennison television’s most intriguing and seductive recurring character, giving up glamour for a luminous, glistening complexity. It’s hard to get enough of her.

And just as previous “Prime Suspects” were nourished by stunning supporting work, “Prime Suspect 3” is also studded by very big performances in relatively small roles. Peter Capaldi’s pivotal transvestite Vera is one, as is Thewlis’ predatory Jackson, who spews oil with every sentence. And the crook-nosed Bell’s slinking Otley wriggles through his scenes like a reptile on the hunt.

“Prime Suspect 3” carries the torch with style and honor. Like its predecessors, it’s the keeper of superior television.

* The four-part “Prime Suspect 3” begins at 9 p.m. Thursday on “Mystery!” on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15.