Errors of Judgement (1)

Jane Tennison is working a new team in Manchester now, and her first case looks routine: a drugs dealer murdered, and a fourteen-year-old boy who confesses to the killing. Too easy, as it turns out. A second murder follows, and Jane believes it is the work of a local man known as The Street, who rules over a community of criminals and has himself covered for every incident. The case is handed to her on arrival, which in this force feels less like trust than like a test.

The boy is an unusual and unexpected confessor, and the second killing makes his story look even thinner. A fourteen-year-old confessing to murder is its own red flag, and Jane is old enough to know it. Proving who really did it is another matter. The Street leaves nothing behind, and his people say nothing at all. Every lead Jane pulls comes back clean. The team around her is new and unproven, and she is the one who has to make it work. And in the middle of all this she is having an affair with her boss, DCI Martin Ballinger, who is also a married man. The episode keeps the two threads tangled, the way life does.

Guy Andrews wrote it and Phil Davis directed. Helen Mirren's Jane is supported by John Brobbey as DC Henry Adeliyeka, Julia Lane as DI Devanney, Steven Mackintosh as The Street, John McArdle as DCS Ballinger, David O'Hara as DS Rankine, Joe Jacobs as Campbell Lafferty, Ray Emmet Brown as Michael Johns, Martin Ronan as DS Pardy and David Norman as Tony Rice.

A confession from a child, a suspect who is never where the evidence points, and a boss she should not be sleeping with. Manchester is not proving gentler than London, and Jane is not proving better at keeping her work and her life apart.