Reviewing my second set of Trial & Retribution thrillers, I'm even more impressed by the considerable depth of character portrayed by Victoria Smurfit as DCI Roisin Connor and David Hayman as DCI Mike Walker. They are joined by DS "Satch" Satchell (Dorian Lough) who has been with the show as long as Hayman, that is, since it's creation by Prime Suspect's Lynda La Plante in 1997. Each storyline rings in at approximately 140 minutes and begins with an "obvious" suspect and ends with someone completely different that will keep you guessing for a while.

The split-screen approach to some of the scenes will remind U.S. audiences of 24, and the handheld camera feel to some of this will make you think that Paul Greengrass directed. The view from the different standpoints (criminal, police) is something akin to Cold Case, as well as the different depictions of what might have been every time the police come up with a different potential cause and scenario. Regardless of what you want to compare it to, it's gritty (different standards for violence, nudity, and language) and the crimes are brutally depicted.

Once again, Trial & Retribution gets a bit deeper into the characters than an average American crime show does. The personal lives of the characters are under more of the audience's 'scope, and whether it's Connor or Walker, their personal demons are dragged out into the light. Neither the cops nor the culprits are perfect human beings, and La Plante's depiction of the cops shows that sometimes there's a very thin line between being on the side of the demons and the angels. That seems to be the calling card of the series, regardless of which set it is, and in this particular set, Connor is the one who makes a series of blunders (but Walker covered enough backwards ground in Set 3 to balance it out).

In my favorite of the three episodes, "Paradise Lost," Connor takes point in a case where a white school teacher is raped and murdered, and her black boyfriend appears to be the likeliest suspect. Of course, the boyfriend has a record, and the fact that both of them were stoned at the time complicates everything. (That lends itself to lesson one of Series 4: when you can't remember where you were or what you did because you were high or drunk, it doesn't matter if you were accused of murder or not because you can't defend yourself!) The mixed racial makeup of the couple lends itself to some racial stereotyping which you'd expect at this point in the United States regardless of what laws might have been passed or how much "progress" has been made; but England doesn't come across looking any more progressive in this episode and they had nearly a two-hundred year headstart. All of that lends itself to a politically charged episode that unearths stereotypes and demands that we consider our own as well.

In the second storyline, "Curriculum Vitae," a single mother discovers that her eighteen-month-old is dead and her nanny is on the run in an episode I found nearly unwatchable as a parent; in the third, "Mirror Image," the crew must determine whether the murder of a police commander and his wife is related to the riches stolen from their home or the riches that their family hopes to inherit. All of them are provocative, and can push your buttons a bit.

Each episode is gritty, brutal, and more descriptive than your average Law & Order episode, with a splash of CSI's forensics in the mix for good measure. But all challenge our sense of justice, our sense of mercy, and our understanding of what we would do if we were involved in moments of grief and violence like these. True, we're rarely challenged to this point, and hopefully we'll never know, but considering what this might look like in our lives will stretch us a bit, and will challenge you to be empathetic to those who must determine justice where it is appropriate.