A car sits on a London street. Somewhere in the neighbourhood, a couple are having a heated argument. Without warning, a woman crunches into the bonnet of the car, having fallen from a great height.
So begins another series of Silent Witness (BBC1) – series 19, to be precise. You may be a hardcore devotee of the show, or it may have flown under your radar for the past two decades, or, like me, you may just dip in every now and again to marvel at how well this pathology procedural has held up over the years, and to wonder at the staff turnover rate at the Lyell Centre.
Silent Witness is never afraid to be complicated; before they present you with the latest jigsaw puzzle of a case, they like to give the box a good shake. The woman landing on the car, it transpires, was an event from 10 years ago. And it remains, as yet, part of a subplot. In the main plot, Dr Nikki Alexander (Emilia Fox) is at the scene of the apparent suicide of a “semi-famous” DJ, only it’s not a suicide. His wrists are both so comprehensively slit – tendons and all – that once he’d done one he wouldn’t have been able to do the other. He also has a broken nurse’s fob watch jammed halfway down his oesophagus.
This crime scene is eerily like one Dr Nikki presided over some years ago. In that case she ruled suicide as the cause of death, and now fears she may have been wrong. An exhumation is called for, much against the wishes of the victim’s son, a priest. Meanwhile, a mildly creepy old flame is sniffing round Dr Nikki. If that sounds complicated, it’s way more complicated than that.
The preview I watched was accompanied by a request not to mention how things fare with Dr Nikki at the end of this, the first of two parts, so I’ll just say they don’t fare great. But if you like your crime dramas dimly lit, ably acted, only occasionally preposterous and chock-full of cut-open dead bodies, then Silent Witness is still right where it always was. Eat beforehand, and wait at least an hour.
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Insert Name Here (BBC2) is a new panel show with Sue Perkins in the host’s chair and a premise that doesn’t really sink in on first hearing. The aim is to “find out everything you never needed to know about a group of people with just one thing in common – they’ve all got the same name”. OK, so – wait, what?
That name – for this inaugural instalment – was Frank. To kick things off, panellists were invited to choose between a Smooth Frank, a Secret Frank, a Heroic Frank and a Sporting Frank, about whom they would be asked trivia questions. When a secret Frank was settled upon, panellist Rob Beckett suggested it could be Anne Frank, which, though in mildly poor taste, made more sense than the actual answer: Frances Gumm, aka Judy Garland, aka no Frank at all.
To be fair, this was not unremarked upon. “It’s a bit worrying for the longevity of the show that the first person we’ve chosen doesn’t even have the right name,” said team captain Josh Widdicombe. In fact, a lot of the jokes were at the expense of the format; it felt like a parlour game played by people not entirely at home with the rules. TV historian Kate Williams repeatedly made the mistake of both knowing the answers and saying them out loud, as if she were on a proper quiz show.
With its breezy contempt for its own formalities, Insert Name Here occupies roughly the same ground as 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, although the latter has the distinct advantage of a well-understood and much-loved set of actual rules. Here, there was nothing established to undermine, unless it was the very notion of the panel show. All in all, an amiable enough half hour, and no one will ever accuse Insert Name Here of taking itself too seriously.
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In Immortal Egypt (BBC2) the engaging and highly enthusiastic Professor Joann Fletcher explored what she contends is the “world’s greatest civilisation”, beginning well before anyone thought to commemorate himself by throwing up a pyramid. In Qurta, 100km south of Luxor, there are images of aurochs – wild cattle that made up 50% of your ancient-ancient Egyptian’s diet – carved into the rock 19,000 years ago. It was also a timely examination, in the sense that at least one of the US presidential candidates maintains that the pyramids were grain stores built by the biblical Joseph. I wish Professor Joann Fletcher could be president.
