Tennison and the Rent Boys

By RICHARD CORLISS

It is the goal of many a modern mystery writer to merge sadism with sociology. If you unleash a serial killer to prey on the young and vulnerable, you'd better add something -- a sermon about society's ills, keen human insight -- so that your movie (The Silence of the Lambs), novel (The Alienist) or TV series doesn't appear irredeemably sordid. If it is done right, author and audience can enjoy the best of both worlds: luridness without guilt.

In Prime Suspect 3, a four-part British mini-series that begins Thursday on PBS' Mystery!, the murder scene is London's gay underground of "rent boys" (child prostitutes), their patrons and pimps. How can one approach this theme without being either sensational or homophobic? The strategy chosen by Lynda La Plante, who also wrote the first Prime Suspect and sketched the story for the second, is twofold: make most of the suspects sympathetic and most of the sleuths complete professionals.

Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) and her team take no voyeuristic pleasure from grotesque events they uncover. Nor do they condescend unduly to the queens and pawns in their investigation. The cops are just doing a job -- one that makes their off-duty lives look drab and irrelevant. Scenes of Tennison's wan private life are mere leavening agents in the acrid yet tangy melodrama that is her life on the force -- the only life she has, really.

While following the modern mystery formula, Prime Suspect 3 succeeds in being suspenseful and moving. The cast is terrific, from Mirren to the prime suspect himself (David Thewlis, star of the film Naked) to a poignant transvestite (Peter Capaldi) to each politician or social worker who falls under the cops' suspicious gaze. They help make Prime Suspect 3 a winner in the burgeoning genre of serial thrillers.