By JOYCE MILLMAN

Now in his fourth season on NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street, the commanding, stage-trained Andre Braugher has helped shape his character, Detective Frank Pembleton, into the most complicated, endlessly fascinating character on prime-time today.

Angry, chain-smoking and fiercely intelligent, Pembleton is a Shakespearean tragic hero in J. Crew khakis and sturdy leather suspenders. Brooding and compassionate, confident and self-flagellating, he strides into the squadroom like a conquering prince, striking down lesser men with a stab of contentious wit. Plagued by hubris, haunted by a moral code instilled by Jesuit teachers at an early age, Pembleton is doomed to permanent disappointment, usually at the world for not measuring up to his standards but mostly at himself for some perceived failing as a cop, a husband, a man, a black man. To put it plainly, Pembleton is mightily pissed off. And he shows no sign of lightening up.

After all, this is a man who is certain that pure evil exists and coincidences don't. Pembleton is unusually spiritual for a cop show hero (well, unless you count "Father Dowling''), and his love/hate relationship with his faith has made for some of Homicide's most entertainingly cerebral moments.

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Next page: Braugher: The Christopher Darden of dramatic TV.