Silent Witness, BBC1 - TV review: Brutal stabbings and gore galore, Blue Monday couldn't be any bleaker

The forensic procedural was back on well-trodden grisly territory this week – and better for it

Murder in mind: Emilia Fox as Dr Nikki Alexander in ‘Silent Witness’

18 January was billed by some as the most depressing day of the year. While “Blue Monday” was originally an invention to boost holiday companies’ profits, you can’t argue with the thinking: it’s cold, days are still short and summer’s a long, long way off. And if you were feeling a bit bleak about life, watching Silent Witness would not have helped.

We’re midway through the run of two-parters in this nineteenth(!) series of the forensic procedural. After last week’s very 2016 storyline– young girl gets radicalised online and goes off to fight in Syria–this one was back on firmer, and I think more successful, ground: grisly, domestic crime.

It started with a brutal stabbing and didn’t get cheerier. The action centred around a lifers’ rehab unit. We were introduced to numerous murderers out on licence who still had fingers in dodgy pies – and had connections to a historic, brutal child killing. Keeping tabs on the charges was forensic psychologist Doctor Sasha Blackburn (Lyndsey Marshal), who took one of her cases too much to heart, you could say. The four regulars were there dealing with the stiffs at the Lyell Centre, not least Emilia Fox’s Doctor Nikki Alexander, possibly the world’s most glam forensic pathologist. How does she keep her hair so coiffed after tinkering with corpses all day? Also, it’s a wonder they haven’t all got eye strain from working in the dark the whole time.

Despite the lighting issues, they all seem to do their jobs admirably– well until matters of the heart get in the way, at least–and just about persuade us to believe those plotlines with more twists than Doc Alexander’s curly post-lab do (hat hair is clearly a not in the script). At least the occasionally clunky dialogue means they keep us abreast of what’s going on.

“There’s always that question, isn’t there? Have you really changed,” said centre chief Thomas Chamberlain (Richard Lintern) as he interrogated one of the lifers. If you didn’t get that, he was there to give balance to Doctor Blackburn’s more sympathetic view. Also, I know these guys aren’t coppers, they’re scientists, but do we really need to see innards? If I wanted to know what a “bright purple” intestine looked like, I would have googled it.

Still, there’s a reason this series has been running for two decades: the gore, the grit, the high body-count, the forensics-for-dummies script, all sprinkled with some emotional angst – January wouldn’t be the same without it.