Silent Witness, episode 8, review: A forensic examination of revenge

When the assassin of the wife of a retired IRA man is finally cornered by the Silent Witness team, he gives this account of his motive: “Kill a man and he’s gone. Kill what he loves and he dies every day.” How true.

As our forensic heroes observe, the author of this grisly aphorism, Alex Harris (played as a mature gent of unnatural handsomeness by Silas Carson) knows exactly what he is doing when he manages to track down, befriend and finally seduce the wife of ex-IRA bomb maker Niall Molloy, now living quietly in England as Pat Walsh (Ian McElhinney, and very effective he is too).

Now, Molloy’s old, secret life is behind him – or so he thinks. In his 1970s heyday, Molloy luxuriated in the nickname “deathmaker”, though his own family knows nothing of his bloody past. Then he receives a Breaking Bad-style cancer diagnosis, and starts to vouchsafe some of the details. After the violent death of his wife, he recruits his son (Tommy Finnegan) to the cause of Irish unity and to avenge her.

The reason why Harris seduces Ms Walsh, and plants a bomb in her car, is revealed only towards the end, and makes a neat counterpoint to the usual motives of sectarian hatred, armed struggle and historical grievance; Molloy was responsible for the death of Harris’s five-month pregnant fiancée some 30 years ago. And, as he eventually confesses in the police interview room, he wanted to make Molloy suffer in a similar way. An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth... but a personal, rather than a political, act of vengeance.

The backdrop of the Troubles also gives the writers an opportunity to add a little back story to Jack Hodgson (David Caves), with his Ulster accent, and to casually chuck in the fine veteran actor Richard Durden as his father, Conor. I don’t know how they can make more of Durden, but they obviously should. This time round, Hodgson’s colleagues Dr Nikki Alexander (Emilia Fox) and Clarissa Mullery (Liz Carr) don’t do much more than nudge things along with a bit of exposition here and there. No matter.

What could have been some crudely drawn themes of retribution, and the sins of the father visited upon blameless children, are framed with an understated symmetry by McElhinney as Walsh/Molloy and by Carson as Harris. The construction of these mirror storylines is intricate and sensitively done, so compliments to writer Marteinn Thorisson.

Both Walsh/Molloy and Carson are “seeking justice”, but never consider doing so via the police or the criminal justice system. They both drag a younger generation into their conflict, and so the cycle of violence extends down the decades, as it has, on and off, for about 400 years – and perhaps as it will once again.

Silent Witness, now in its 22nd series, mostly manages to stay the right side of self-parody, though it falters sometimes, with its slightly stilted dialogue, grisly dissections and habitually dark, “atmospheric” lighting. Usually, one of the team is lit by the screen of a forensically disembowelled laptop.

However, on this occasion at least, cliché and accidental satire is entirely avoided, even when they give Rocky, a plucky Staffordshire bull terrier, a full forensic examination (he drew the blood of one of the suspects, you see).

I particularly enjoyed the editing of the last literally explosive scene, where Harris tries and just fails to kill Walsh’s grandchildren. The action is replayed as a groaning, smoky, slow-mo montage, just as it does when time “slows down” in any life-threatening experience. The technical term is, I believe, akinetopsia. As the Silent Witness team would say.