Silent Witness: series 19, episode 1, BBC One, review: 'an essay in relaxing murder drama'

You can see why this long-running crime drama, which celebrates 20 years on air in February, has still got some life left in it, says Harry Mount

Emilia Fox stars as Dr Nikki Alexander in the 19th series of the BBC crime drama Silent Witness
Emilia Fox as Dr Nikki Alexander Credit: Photo: BBC

There was an undeniably corny moment in Silent Witness (BBC One), when cheeky, lovable Ulster pathologist Jack Hodgson (David Caves) came across a murderer’s bootprint.

For all its hi-tech medical sheen, Silent Witness is comfortingly old-fashioned. Some of the clunking clues to the episode’s triple murder could have come out of Agatha Christie or Cluedo: if it wasn’t the murderer’s bootprint, it was the unusual choice of Gitanes cigarettes, sprinkled in his wake, that gave the game away.

David Caves stars as forensic scientist Jack Hodgson in series 19 of the BBC crime drama Silent Witness

Whenever the plot was in danger of getting at all complicated, you could rely on dimbo cop, DS Jones (Thomas Coombes), to ask the question you were longing to ask. Last night’s plot involved two suicides who had been secretly anaesthetised before they were bumped off. So perhaps a Harold Shipman figure did it? Don’t worry if you don’t know who Harold Shipman was; rely on DS Jones to fill the gap – “The doctor who killed his patients?”

Silent Witness is an essay in relaxing murder drama – like Lewis or Inspector Morse, transferred from Oxford to the pathology lab, although it employs the detective/medical soap structure of multiple plots. In this episode, there were the two staged suicides, plus an ex-con who had apparently pushed his pregnant lover out of a window. And up popped a good-looking, shady ex-boyfriend of Dr Nikki Alexander (Emilia Fox), rekindling the flames. Just like Lewis and Morse, Dr Alexander finds steady relationships tricky to negotiate – an ideal way to inject extra tension into the formula.

Emilia Fox stars as Dr Nikki Alexander in the 19th series of the BBC crime drama Silent Witness

It isn’t easy to pull off this kind of superior schlock, though. Both Fox and Caves are adept at handling the join-the-dots clues and the hammy plot exposition lines that keep the mystery going for several hours. Throw in those grippingly gruesome moments when they examine slash marks on the suicides’ wrists and you can see why Silent Witness – which celebrates 20 years on air this February – has still got some life left in it. I just feel sorry for the actors playing the corpses.