"Keeper of Souls" is IMO the best of the Prime Suspect series because it's the darkest of the lot. In the end, justice is only partly served by proxy - a muckraking, obnoxious journalist - and we don't even see it happening; we leave the plot as Tennyson, having failed to get a conviction from, or produce conclusive evidence on Parker-Jones (an excessively scary Ciaran Hinds) who is clearly guilty as charged, abandons the files in the interview room for the journalist to peruse and plunder.
We have become used to crime stories without happy endings - most notably in the Law & Order series - but "Keeper of the Souls" is particularly disturbing because it deals with the organized abuse of children and a pedophile ring leading to Police HQ and hushed up by authority.
However, the greatest feat is that the story - on such a bleak background - presents us with a string of extremely touching destinies; the drag artist who tries to help, but is too frightened to offer anything but vague clues that Tennyson is unable to decipher; the policeman who is placed on the squad to spy on Tennyson, but who switches allegiance after being bitten by an AIDS-infected boy, another policeman who earns Tennyson's respect by admitting in front of the team that he is gay, the two underage boys who die during the investigation, and, most notably, Tennyson suffering a 30 seconds breakdown after having decided to have her pregnancy terminated, thus giving up on having children altogether, a decision which will continue to haunt her throughout the series (until the final episode in which she befriends the 14-year-old Penny whom she sees as the daughter she might have had only to find out that she is the killer Tennyson has been looking for).
At the end of "Keeper," almost nothing is solved; we don't know if the bitten police spy (who turns out to be a good guy after all) has really contracted AIDS, and there is no legal prosecution of the killer, only an indication that he may be exposed in the press (and will probably not sue the paper for fear of further investigation, we must conclude).
All of two unexpected star appearances flank Mirren: As the reluctant victim of abuse who refuses to testify in court we see Jonny Lee Miller just before he rose to stardom with "Trainspotting", and David Thewliss fresh from "Naked" appears as a terrifying hit-man.
We have become used to crime stories without happy endings - most notably in the Law & Order series - but "Keeper of the Souls" is particularly disturbing because it deals with the organized abuse of children and a pedophile ring leading to Police HQ and hushed up by authority.
However, the greatest feat is that the story - on such a bleak background - presents us with a string of extremely touching destinies; the drag artist who tries to help, but is too frightened to offer anything but vague clues that Tennyson is unable to decipher; the policeman who is placed on the squad to spy on Tennyson, but who switches allegiance after being bitten by an AIDS-infected boy, another policeman who earns Tennyson's respect by admitting in front of the team that he is gay, the two underage boys who die during the investigation, and, most notably, Tennyson suffering a 30 seconds breakdown after having decided to have her pregnancy terminated, thus giving up on having children altogether, a decision which will continue to haunt her throughout the series (until the final episode in which she befriends the 14-year-old Penny whom she sees as the daughter she might have had only to find out that she is the killer Tennyson has been looking for).
At the end of "Keeper," almost nothing is solved; we don't know if the bitten police spy (who turns out to be a good guy after all) has really contracted AIDS, and there is no legal prosecution of the killer, only an indication that he may be exposed in the press (and will probably not sue the paper for fear of further investigation, we must conclude).
All of two unexpected star appearances flank Mirren: As the reluctant victim of abuse who refuses to testify in court we see Jonny Lee Miller just before he rose to stardom with "Trainspotting", and David Thewliss fresh from "Naked" appears as a terrifying hit-man.