MI-5 has really great female characters, I think. The two main characters (I guess?) are guys, but it's really an ensemble show. It's not a gender-balanced ensemble show, but they do well with the female characters they do have. Of course, it's also a spy show, so there have been a certain number of Muslim terrorist storylines--but I think they've handled them in a much more nuanced way than most TV, and there have also been a lot of IRA-etc. terrorist storylines and non-terrorist storylines. That said, as of the last season I watched, both of my favorite female characters were off the team, as was one I liked a lot who kind of vanished for vague reasons. The only major female character left was one who really bugs me; I don't know who they bring on in the season following that. Granted, most of my favorite male characters were also off the team or dead by that point, too! It's that kind of show.

My biggest issue with Inspector Lewis is that the police chief has been somewhat one-dimensional "hard-ass boss who's no fun", and she's one of the two major female characters (the other is a medical examiner and awesome). I think she's getting more character depth, but I'm not sure if she ever gets much. But I do love Lewis and Hathaway, and the show does really well at creating well-paced interesting mysteries that are actually hard to predict and feel really grounded in Oxford (at least to me--I've never been to Oxford, but they feel like that have a strong sense of place). Although it's usually about murders, the focus is very much on motivations and detecting, not on forensics or gore.