I've reviewed the first four Prime Suspects on DVD (1 2 3 4)and I keep waiting for the quality to drop off. It hasn't The taught British police drama, led by Helen Mirren's awe-inspiring performances, which she builds on each time out, maintains a level of quality and tension that few American shows can, especially over such a long period of time. I suppose it's partly thanks to the Brits not driving a good thing into the ground with contractually obligated 24 episodes a year. They just tell the stories when they have them to tell. If you have to wait years between installments, so be it. (The closest American television comes to this philosophy is The Sopranos, and that's worked out pretty good, too.)

Prime Suspect 5 finds Mirren's Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison reassigned to Manchester. One of the pleasures of each new Prime Suspect is finding where the endlessly feather-ruffling top cop has gotten herself transferred to. Manchester is a great setting for her; Not as metropolitan as London, but deceptively rough. Tennison discovers a cut-throat drug-dealing underworld there that rivals anything she ever faced in Metro for nastiness and ruthlessness.

The initial crime that Tennison sets out to solve is the murder of a small-time drug dealer and near-murder of his friend in a housing project. Of course no one wants to talk and it's up to the local cops to point out a guy named "The StreetÓ (Steven Mackintosh), an ultra-confident drug lord with a passion for his two Rottweillers, power and not much else. He taunts Tennison with the knowledge that he's untouchable: He hasn't been arrested for anything in years since slickly escaping certain incarceration after burning a man's hands in a deep fryer. Yuck.

Another powerful man enters Tennison's life in this installment:The head of police in Manchester, Detective Chief Inspector Ballinger (John McArdle), whose views on law enforcement (containment of the bad element in the ghetto) are at odds with Tennison's fight-for-what's-right idealism. But they have a mutual respect that leads to an affair.

The plot (and the investigation) changes over the course of the program, with one murder morphing into another, leading Tennison down a number of paths. As usual, there is police corruption at play (really a Prime Suspect staple) but this time it comes from an unusual angle, giving the viewer something to chew on. There are also other unorthodox paths along the way, including a riveting interrogation scene where Tennison tries to get a young suspect to admit that he didn't commit a crime.

It's nice that the sometimes funny/sometimes brutal Prime Suspect series can continue to surprise after all this time. The only downside here is the increasing reliance on more Hollywood-style setups. There are some silly action pieces and caricatures. The Street, who is an interesting character as played by the excellent Mackintosh, still can't help escaping super-villain territory at times. (He reminds me of Luther Mahoney, the uber-bad drug dealer on Homicide: Life on the Street, an ongoing character I always felt robbed the show of its honest "most criminals are idiotsÓ philosophy.) Still, this is another example of how a gritty series, anchored by a powerful, at times unstable, hero can stay fresh over the years.

VIDEO:
A major step back. The first three Prime Suspects featured subpar video quality. The fourth installment actually looked better, acceptable even. Sadly, part five is back to the earlier smeary, blurry look. The second disc for some reason seems a little sharper but overall this is another ugly transfer. Pity, that. Also, I also noticed a video glitch at one point on the second disc and one key scene became unwatchable from freezing and skipping, although I suspect that was disc-specific damage (I couldn't see any scratches on my copy but it didn't seem like a manufacturing error.) It's full-screen.

AUDIO:
The Dolby Surround audio is once again nothing to write home about. Even more annoying than usual is the lack of subtitles. The usual messiness of the audio track is made worse by the thick Manchester accents that much of the cast sports. This is a tough one to watch at times.

EXTRAS:
Nope.