The mixture of identity politics, murder, and possible police corruption continues in this second installment of the BBC's Prime Suspect series. Helen Mirren once again imbues ferociously driven London detective Jane Tennison with an all-too-believable combination of professional passion and personal hubris. Daring to look simultaneously sexy and unapologetically fortyish, Mirren does for the drab overcoat what Raquel Welch did for the fur bikini. This sex symbol, however, is as brainy and neurotic as her predecessor was mute and available. The feminist themes of Prime Suspect 1 are reduced here to a murmur, allowing the race politics of multicultural England to take center stage. But the script (by Allan Cubitt and series creator Lynda La Plante) weaves such concerns into a mystery plot so convoluted and resonant that the specter of stridency only occasionally appears. The problem, if there is one, is that the drawn-out denouement cannot live up to the complex twists and reversals that led up to it. As with a few other Prime Suspect scripts, the story is more interesting before anything definitive gets solved. Such quibbles aside, Prime Suspect 2 more than lives up to its predecessor and again sports a uniformly fine supporting cast.