Silent Witness
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- This article is about a TV series. For the Hong Kong horse, see Silent Witness (horse).
Silent Witness is a long-running British television thriller series made by the BBC's in-house Drama Serials production department, and screened on the BBC One channel. First broadcast in 1996, it is still running as of 2006 with a 10th series that started broadcasting on 16 July 2006.
The programme originally followed the activities of an attractive female pathologist, Dr Sam Ryan (who was promoted to professor part way through the series), played by Amanda Burton, although Ryan's character departed early in the eighth season in 2004. There had been a succession of regular supporting characters, changing almost every series, but Dr Leo Dalton (William Gaminara) and Dr Harry Cunningham (Tom Ward), who were introduced in the sixth season in 2002, remained in the series and continued as lead characters following Ryan's departure, with Dalton replacing her as professor. A new character, Dr Nikki Alexander (Emilia Fox), was introduced to the team in the eighth season in 2004. Although she was introduced as a palaeontologist, not a pathologist, and was originally enlisted by the team to help analyse bones, Alexander rather mysteriously became a medically-qualified pathologist as soon as Amanda Burton left the series.
The series was set in Cambridge for a while, but has been London-based for some time.
The programme is typically made up of a series of two-part stories, usually with six to eight episodes per season.
The series is often criticised for apparently showing the pathologist actively investigating the crime, an approach which was parodied by British comedic duo French and Saunders as "Witless Silence". This characteristic of pathologist as urban hero follows on earlier similar series such as Quincy, M.E. on US TV (itself based on an earlier Canadian TV series Wojeck) and is also shared by the continuing CBS series .
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