And that’s where this four-disc set of The Commander begins: with Blake having an affair with a murderer she sent away a decade earlier, a guy just out on early parole and starting to make a splash as an author. (His first book, written in prison and all about his crime and rehabilitation, is already a bestseller.) Yeah, she’s that kind of reckless. It’s a bit preposterous, actually, this first series, called “Entrapment,” but that’s what makes it so much fun: here’s a show about a female cop that’s just as ridiculous as the ones about the guys have always been. Amanda Burton, as Blake? Completely dishy, in a stately, dignified, classy kind of way, of course, which makes it all the more delicious when she gets down and dirty with the killer dude (played by Hugh Bonneville [Tsunami: The Aftermath], who’s kind of a blurry version of Colin Firth). As you might imagine, this torrid affair does not remain a secret, not among her colleagues -- some of whom, particularly of the male persuasion, are quite jealous of her success -- and not among the press. Oh, dear.

In the exclusive interview with Burton on Disc 4, she says, of the genesis of the series, “We wanted to make a very dark and quite a dangerous character,” and she and La Plante (Trial & Retribution) -- who wrote all of these stories and serves as producer as well -- have certainly succeeded there. The long-term impact of that one rash indulgence in “Entrapment” keeps coming back to haunt Blake throughout the three succeeding stories in this set: “Virus” and “Blackdog,” both from 2005, and “Blacklight,” from 2006. Not that that stops her from continuing to do as she pleases, even as her bosses chafe and her professional rivals continue to try to push her into corners. “She’s not really bound, I don’t think,” says Burton, “by what one would hope would be the normal practicing rules of the average policewoman.” But this is fantasy, and it is a tasty blow for female equality... the right to be as big a self-centered, make-your-own-rules asshole as men have always enjoyed. I’m not saying that’s a good thing in real life, for either gender, but as pretend? I love it.

The other great thing about The Commander? It’s an excellent example of how British TV does it all so much better, in some ways, than American TV does. These four stories, each spread over two or three episode and ranging in length from 140 to 150 minutes, are more like a series of connected novels than they are discrete episodes of a TV show as American audiences are used to. Each story has enough space to delve deeply into the motivations and messups of its characters, and each story is just as long as it needs to be, no longer and no shorter. And it must work, from a business perspective, because there were three more series of The Commander in 2007, and another aired this week on Britain’s ITV.

For now, these four stories are all American audiences have available. Check ’em out: they’re better than anything on American primetime at the moment.