Tuesday, 6 October 2015

Prime Suspect 5: Errors of Judgement (1996 Philip Davis)

Yes, that Phil Davis. We had been lulled into a false sense of security with the last two - this is another 200 minute epic, set in Manchester, written by Guy Andrews and dealing with the corrupt coalition between a senior policeman and a feared local criminal known as 'The Street', rather convincingly played by Stephen Mackintosh.

So we have a new team headed by John Mcardle, with Julia Lane, John Brobbery, and the measured Glasgow tones of David O'Hara.

Barry McCann shot this one, with really good black night scenes, but he wouldn't have liked our ITV DVD box set presentation which crops his (presumably) 14x9 image into 4x3 so that even main characters are often slightly out of frame.

The ending, in which the bent cop stands by his decision to ally with a psycho, seems slightly incredible, but there's the usual very tense finish in the kind of derelict industrial estate that Life on Mars then reclaimed for seventies locations.

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