sheilaabrahamsson

I shall never forget this series. Admittedly, I was an impressionable teenager, and this was an early example of TV SciFi, but it both terrified and fascinated me at the same time. In those days, I suppose we were fairly naive, and unused to side effects, so that everything seemed horribly real. The moment when one of the mummified aliens dropped was one of the most shocking moments I can remember seeing on TV.....my whole family jumped in horror ! I wonder whether anything like this can ever affect us again, or whether we are too accustomed to realistic horror on our screens. If so, a shame. There was a sense of building horror in this series, which was carefully and delicately done. No "in your face " violence, but a suggestion of mounting menace which I doubt has been equalled for some time.

Having mourned the loss of Leo and Harry for some time now, I'm gradually coming to terms with Jack as Nikki's latest colleague/sparring partner.

This episode seethes with false starts, red herrings and other distractions. Just as we think we may have made sense of some of it.....we haven't. Still, that's "Silent Witness" and it's what we've come to expect.

As usual, although there is a reasonable amount of actual pathology involved, our dauntless pair still do a great deal of their own sleuthing and investigating. Do real pathologists have time for this sort of thing, I wonder? Do they trot around interviewing suspects and getting themselves into dangerous situations? No matter.....it all makes for a good story.

My one really big beef (and it's a BIG one) is with the ABC programmers here in Australia. The very moment the episode ended, next week's preview flashed on the screen, before I had a chance to turn it off, or look away. Great......there was a full screen shot which literally gave the whole plot away. This is not the first time, either, and it's INFURIATING!

Despite some big names (in Australia at any rate) this fails to deliver any kind of emotional or dramatic punch. Formulaic characters, meandering story line and a clunky script make for an uninteresting and downright boring offering. Surely Australian scriptwriters can come up with something better than this! I tuned in with the hope of seeing something along the lines of "Sea Change"......perhaps because of William McInnes?. No such luck. The dialogue seems forced and wooden, and even the likes of the aforesaid W M, Claudia Karvan etc, can do nothing to bring it to life. In fact, I have to wonder what the producers were intending with this series....whatever it was, I'm afraid they failed.