Silent Witness, series 27, episode 1, review: this must be the dullest lead character on TV

Everyone knows that the departure of Gary Lineker from Match of the Day wouldn’t dent ratings in the slightest. People watch for the football highlights, not the presenter. I wonder if the same would be true of Emilia Fox leaving Silent Witness (BBC One)?

The forensics drama is now in its 27th series, and several million people still tune in every week. But I can’t think of a drama with a duller central character. The most interesting thing about pathologist Dr Nikki Alexander is her hair, which is always coiffed to Michelle Mone levels of perfection. Otherwise, there isn’t much to say about her.

Ask the man in the street to conjure an image of the pathologist in Silent Witness and chances are they’ll picture Amanda Burton, even though she left in series eight. I suppose Alexander makes a change from the madly quirky forensic pathologists that you get in detective shows. And, here’s the point: people watch Silent Witness for the plots, not the stars.

This four-part story involves the discovery of a body in a church. The crime has all the hallmarks of a series of murders in 2003-04. The suspect in that case, Calvin Dunn (Leo Staar), was interviewed several times but never arrested. Then he vanished. Has he returned after 20 years to resume his killing spree? Or is there an alternative explanation? And did Dunn’s job as an IT specialist for a US weapons technology firm have anything to do with his disappearance?

Josette Simon plays a DCI who worked on the original case and is called back to investigate the links to this one. She asks for Alexander’s help because – well, because that’s what happens in Silent Witness. The best thing about this series, though, is the casting of John Hannah. He plays a retired pathologist named Charles Beck, whose wife may have been one of Dunn’s victims. The loss has turned Beck into a bitter man.

Hannah is an excellent actor (and narrator of Bafta-winning BBC competition Race Across the World) whose career is now pretty low-key in comparison to his 1990s fame in films Sliding Doors and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Here he gets a lengthy soliloquy about his wife, which is surely designed to bring back memories of his reading of WH Auden’s Funeral Blues in Four Weddings. As usual, the lead characters peered at some bodies and exchanged some perfunctory dialogue. But the plot was sufficiently intriguing to make me come back for more. And that’s why this show is still hanging in there.

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