So what is it with Silent Witness?

Discussion of TJ's most popular venture to date!
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ThyneAlone
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So what is it with Silent Witness?

Post by ThyneAlone »

How many people out there are followers of the (UK) forensic procedural drama Silent Witness (20th series just finished, it started in 1996)? Like Sherlock, it works in short series (though not as short as Sherlock!) that tend to run to 4 - 6 stories in 8 -12 hour-long episodes; and, like Sherlock, it always makes the regular detectives look like complete idiots. The element in it that most people find silly is that the forensic scientists actually go out and solve crimes themselves. Brennan is believable in the field because of Booth's presence and therefore the FBI link. Emilia Fox's pretty and talented Nikki Alexander usually has no reason for leaving the lab and getting as involved with victims' relatives as she does. However, although Silent Witness doesn't have that edge of humour to set off its bleak storylines (apart from the wit exchanged in the lab), I have observed some weird parallels.

Nikki isn't in charge of the lab, and the characters work very much as a team, but she is still the show's main focus.
The team members mostly have very convoluted family backstories.
One of the workers there is a genuinely disabled individual and moves around the lab in a wheelchair.
The most recent finale storyline included Nikki being buried underground with the team trying desperately to work out where she was through her descriptions of her surroundings by means of a rapidly fading cellphone, the insect life and dirt being significant. Fans were complaining because they didn't see her reunion with her comrades after she found her own way out.
And, for goodness' sake, the Northern Irish maverick and extraordinarily intelligent entomologist of the lab who has anger management issues (he controls them to some extent through his hobby of cage fighting) and who was first introduced in 2013, is called Jack Hodgson!

Coincidence? Well, they started earlier and originally had a different woman at the helm, but it's all starting to sound a bit similar.
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skftex
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Re: So what is it with Silent Witness?

Post by skftex »

This show is not available here in the US unless it is on Netflix or Hulu, which I do not have. I do think it was years and years ago shown back when A&E was showing a lot of shows from the UK, like Midsomer Murders. So while the parallels are interesting, I think a lot of us here in the US probably haven't seen it to comment fully. :sad:
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ThyneAlone
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Re: So what is it with Silent Witness?

Post by ThyneAlone »

Not especially expecting a response from my wonderful US friends, as I know these things cross the pond at erratic times (and sometimes not at all), I just thought, having seen the 'buried' finale, that the comparisons were interesting and that UK viewers might think so too!
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