Silent Witness series 28 starts tonight 6 January 2025 on BBC 1

[IwantToRetire]

Starting this thread (as I did this time last year) as the comments on the episodes on telly addicts are always so funny it makes it worth while sitting through the totally unconvincing plots, characters, so called relationships and ...

But who knows maybe this year will be different!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0026l5k

I found myself googling the training for a forensic pathologist to try to work out the absolute youngest she could have been when introduced! Nikki could be slightly younger than Emilia but not by enough that that wasn't a ludicrous question. Even if she was mid 40s that's just not a casual conversation you ask a few years into a relationship at that point on a woman's life.
Lots of people on twitter who 'ship' them though were squeeing about a potential baby storyline.

😄 Very true. I always thought fight his club hobby was completely ludicrous. We’re supposed to buy into Jack having a dangerous dark side when in reality it’s all about collecting plaster moulds of wellie boot prints with him.

I didn't mind Velvy so much but Jack's niece really grinded my gears - she didn't work there but was always there sticking her oar in or contacted to the story in some really contrived way.
To be fair I am often not keen on 'new ' characters and they take a few series to grow on me. I still miss Leo and Harry!

I was wondering whether the hint at a baby storyline would lead into talking about IVF, surrogacy.

Though someone will have to help Jack understand.

What with news stories of women into their 60s getting pregnant, they could afford to do this just by raising some cash on one if not both of their sumptuous homes. (Or did they move in together)

Would make it quite topical and switch between new life starting and old life ending.

Just watched the second episode. Interesting storyline 🤔 and sad.
I do think Jack and Nikki will explore having a baby.
Not sure how to feel, it was a bit disjointed. Will probably carry on as I'm quite over invested in SW after all these years

It would be interesting to have Harry return briefly from his humanitarian work or whatever it was, and then to have a scene (or scenes) where they reflect back on who they were and what they are now.

But would think they have nothing in common now.

I'm tempted to do the same. The episodes get more and more ludicrous.

David Caves is 46 and Emilia Fox is 50.

Even if they were portraying characters several years younger, a story line about them having children is a bit daft.

Didn't Nicky lose a baby when she was younger or did I dream that?

I'm sure she did.

She also had a pregnancy scare with her ex in the series.

Did she also have to deliver a detective's baby when she went into labour, or was that someone else on a different programme?

I've watched 3 episodes from series one. It is so much better ( feels quite dated thought) The subtitles are as I remember them too. Unlike the endless 'sinister/ephemeral music'. Just nicely inaccurate 😂
I can't be doing with the current series and the nonsensical love story, on top of the total farce that is the forensics team taking on the work of an entire murder squad 😂

I came on here to see if anyone had explained what happened. Who killed who and when, and how much of it was tripping? I still have no idea

I can see the scam of the elderly but ..

The man they arrested and the decomposed bodies how old was he when they were killed?

The old man getting out of the river with a bag on his head, never mind making his way home and killing someone?

Was that the victim hallucinating that it was the old man?

The copper walking away when someone tells him they are cleaning up a house during a murder inquiry?

Nikki & Jack have no chemistry and also why have they turned Jacks character into a bit of an arse?

Answers on a postcard 🤔

I’ve watched this show ever since it started. I loved Amanda Burton back then. I’ve had to stop watching due to Jack and Nikki being an item. There’s zero chemistry between them. It just doesn’t work and I can’t stand Jack. Bring back Harry.

I couldn't understand anything in last nights episode. Gave up in the end. Shame it's lost its way.

The two younger blokes-the one who went to the house about repairs & the one who worked in the care home killed the lady in the cave, the couple & tried to kill the old man who was friends with the couple.

It seems the old man did rather surprisingly get over his drugged state, remove the bag from his head, get out of the water and up the bank, and make way home, so that he could kill the young man in his muddy ( yet dry ) clothes.
I assumed it was a drugged hallucination on the part of the young man, becaude it was so far fetched but apparently not as the old man was later arrested.

I'm enjoying the early episodes with Amanda Burton. Much more believable and with a great cast. Have been playing spot the actor, as there are a lot of currently famous older actors, in their youth. Spotted a young Idris Elba, for example.

It was all quite strange & no resolution.

I found last night's really difficult to get in to. It could be really good but it's just so bad. It's like they have a new batch of writers who can't finish a storyline and I just don't care about Nikki and Jack's relationship and could do without it being shoehorned into every episode.

I agree with others, I think it's lost its way.

Was half looking forward to last nights episode (as there was so little else on). By 9.30 I was so disinterested I was lost and so went to bed

Shame.

All I took from last night's episode was "Oh Nikki's got a lovely coat but plum isn't my colour" and "That's Julia's mum from Motherland!"

I quite enjoyed it.

I am guessing the Asian Lady with Mesatholemia was housed in the tower block and exposed there to asbestos and the local authority knew, had something on the architect/estate agent and made him.play along with it. I want to know more about the previously wounded tongue and oesophagus and am wondering who did it because it probably wasn't the young Asian lady?

That's my guess too, as someone else in the story died of cancer.

People knew the residents of that were exposed to something that makes them ill .

I’ve started forwarding the bits when it’s just Nicky and Jack. Makes it far more enjoyable watching.

I have watched both this weeks episodes, but will not post spoilers.

Although again this week, have gone for a topical political issue.

In some ways the story lines, and the investigations, would be so much better if we didn't have to bother with the "lead characters".

They are almost irrelevant or ridiculously inserted into scenes.

If anyone does watch tonight, please take notes!

I have questions, which I think is more my problem of not focusing on the plot and spending too much time, thinking nobody from the Lyle or whatever it is called would be there.

If they can have recuring detectives, couldn't they have recuring pathologists.

When the "stars" of the show have zero star quality it makes them annoying and intrusive.

Agree. I'm actually watching from the beginning alongside and the whole premise used to be she was a strong, intelligent, independent woman married to her job but all the men respected her and wanted to date her. Nikki can't do any of that with Jack about and the two of them seem to rather play detective than follow the science in these episodes. Previously people warmed to Amanda's character and respected her to ask for her help, she didn't run all over crime scenes with her lover speculating and discovering all of the evidence before the police even searched the area. It's lost the threads of exposing real crimes that went under the radar and become too glamorised without any real relational substance to like about the main pathologist or any of her team.