The Penitent - Part 1

It used to be Silent Witness was an eminently watchable series. It had tight writing, solid acting and intriguing story lines. No more. The dialog is infantile. The acting unnatural and stagey. But most of all, in this case especially, the guilty party is presented to us in the first half hour. It spoils the rest of the story. There's no mystery who the villain is. But that is just the beginning of plot holes, ridiculous coincidences, stereotypes, sloppy editing and boring conversations. I wonder if the folks behind this series studied the demographics and decided the average Silent Witness viewer has an IQ of 100 or below.

I've loved this series until this season aired. It's predictable and poorly planned. The plot falls flat and the characters are boring. If the next episode is as bad as the first three, sadly I won't be watching any further. The show seems empty and not as rich as previous seasons. Also the way the characters seem to imagine what happened to the victims seem like a cheap filming method. There's no wanting more from this season. Something is missing. Maybe the ideas have dried up or was written in haste with only the need to get it on air mattering. Whatever the reason for this season's total failure to captivate, I won't be wasting my time on it further.

I really do not understand how it can be that a so well loved series gets the most hideous scripts with dialogues that make you cringe and dread the upcoming sentence - which you already know, because it's out of the "writing trivial, nonsensical, unbelievable crap for idiots"-book. At some point of this longrunning series I stopped watching, because I couldn't take any more of what is at the end an insult to the intelligence of the viewers. Now we are at that point again.

Do they get paid enough? This lazy writing, who approves of it? Who says, yeah, that's good. Let's do that. Let#s destroy all the characters, especially the leading ones, make them flat, act like no human would, make them completely inconsistent with what they have been built up to be in the previous years and let them talk rubbish.

I feel sorry for all the actresses and actors involved.

Poor script, overload of PC and workery- then I read the other day the BBC said if you don't like it don't watch.

Advise taken, I won't bother anymore even though our licence PAYS for this utter BS.

Are the actors that have been in it for over a decade that desperate for work?

The storyline's have been getting poorer and poorer since series 15 but now they're on a massive downhill slide.

They've always been slightly ridiculous with the pathologists all acting like one man, one woman crime fighter's but you could put up with it because it was pretty decent with Harry and Leo - but now there's no single redeeming character.

For those 9 and 10 star reviews saying ignore the negative reviews - you're clearly watching CBBC.

Having been an avid fan of Silent Witness of many years, from Series 25, I feel it has went downhill and have been left disappointed.

Its script writing and ability to deliver the story in a well acted and realistic way has always been very good.....until now.

I feel that now the main issue is the script writing followed by poorer acting and quite unrealistic scenes and generally poor story telling.

This was confirmed by watching Series 26. It fails to transition between series 25 and and 26 in terms of staffing/new members of the team and the relationship between Nikki and Jack.

Also the series 26 episode 1 & 2 story is relatively good on paper but very poorly delivered and acted out.

Many key omissions from realism and blatant holes in the story.

I question whether I would continue to watch it.