Silent Witness review: A bad example of the forensic thriller genre

What kind of a criminal mind devises a modus operandi that involves toilet-based, cold-blooded murder?

That’s the challenge that faces the Silent Witness (BBC1) team, as we find ourselves midway through a two-part mystery that ought to have been subtitled “the phantom khazi serial killer of old London town”. It’s not supposed to be The Two Ronnies, I grant you, but it is eerie how no one, but no one, ever cracks a smile on Silent Witness.

Most of us have experienced a few violent struggles of our own in the loo, but those perpetrated by the phantom khazi killer are of a totally different order.

The killer(s) appears to be targeting trans people, or those with a connection to a charity that helps trans people. Three have been knocked off so far, and the routine is the same. It’s carefully documented by our team of superheroes, returning for a 22nd series of arterial blood-spattered adventures: Dr Nikki Alexander (Emilia Fox), Jack Hodgson (David Caves), Clarissa Mullery (Liz Carr) and Dr Thomas Chamberlain (Richard Lintern). This softly spoken, absurdly conscientious, self-possessed and mutually respectful team must be the only workplace in the country where no one backbites or bitches or tells a joke in poor taste about some cadaver they’ve recently carved up, but so it is. The worst bad-mouthing is some tepid criticism of government cuts. Everything is, in traditional Silent Witness style, filmed in subdued light, in subdued tones and subdued emotions. Anyway, it’s all conducive to intense forensic scrutiny.

Talking of which, the team’s forensic analysis soon reveals a consistent pattern in the attacks. The apparently drunk victims are seen on CCTV staggering into a public loo. That in itself is something never undertaken lightly, so the team correctly assume that the unfortunates were truly desperate. So desperate in fact, that by the looks of the loos in question, they’d be willing to risk typhus or dysentery as they approach the toxic contents of the lavatory pan. I don’t know about Dr Alexander and her colleagues, but these are the worst I’ve seen on screen since the infamous “Worst Toilet In Scotland” sequence in Trainspotting (it’s on YouTube, if you think you’re hard enough).

Once ensconced, they throw their guts up, whereupon the killer(s) bursts into the cubicle and slashes them with a serrated blade. The team then goes about finding whether this transphobic killer is trans themselves. There are tiny DNA and fingerprint clues that lead them towards members of a trans community, and they find that the date rape drug GHB has been administered to render the victims helpless.

So it’s a bad example of the forensic thriller genre, this story, and it suffers from two main problems (apart from the state of the bogs). First, the dialogue, concerning as it does the topical issue of trans rights (including use of public toilets), is sometimes a bit too didactic. I can see that this might be necessary in our still unenlightened times, but it is a bit clunky to hear a detective utter a perfectly turned soundbite as if straight from a public health leaflet: “Gender is what you go to bed as; sexuality is who you go to bed with.”

Second, though, is the murder technique itself. Because, as we all know, sometimes you lose your guts, in one direction or other, long before you reach the relative sanctity of a bathroom. Sometimes, to the embarrassment of all concerned, you may find yourself vomiting all over your father-in-law’s new suede shoes (just for an example, there). In which case, the serial killer would be lucky to escape splashback, and would have to abandon the attempt, with the clear possibility that their doping exercise would be uncovered. I haven’t spent much of my life plotting the deaths of others (fun as it can be), but even I could see the flaws there.

So, some of the credibility of Silent Witness finds itself being flushed away before the detectives really have a chance to investigate their suspects. Even as they stand around the public loos, as the coppers sometimes say, they’re left with nothing to go on.