Series 21 of Silent Witness is an absolute corker, some of its strongest work in years as it touches on the profoundly personal for the Lyell team
“You interfered in my investigation”
After a couple of good but not great seasons, Series 21 of Silent Witness finally cracks the code for this iteration of the Lyell team to come up with a superb string of episodes, its best in years. For me, this is mainly because the writers identified personal stories that actually resonated, that made sense for the characters for once, instead of just being bolted onto cases of the week.
So Nikki suffers badly from PTSD from the traumatic events of the Series 20 finale in Mexico (a rare occasion where past consequences are actually played out instead of just forgotten) and her shame at seeking therapy plays a crucial part in ‘Duty of Candour’. And Thomas’ role as a father is interestingly interrogated when his daughter comes to stay, navigating the issues that arise from his ex-wife starting a new family with her new fella. Continue reading “TV Review: Silent Witness Series 21”
Finally, after too many years of yoyo-ing between good series bad series, Spooks finally put together two strong instalments back to back. I think the shorter run (8 episodes) really does focus the writing which now goes all-in on the serial plot line running through the whole series, yet still finding time to blend in self-contained storylines here and there.
The introduction of series-long plots didn’t necessarily work first time round for Spooks but in Series 7, the magic certainly happens to produce one of the best seasons across its decade-long life. Perhaps the reduced episode order from 10 to 8 helped to refine the effectiveness of the storytelling, recognising that it was Adam’s time to go definitely worked and finally made the right kind of room for Ros to rise, and giving Gemma Jones this material was an absolute masterstroke. 
