Important question for Silent Witness fans

That does seem odd.

Driving me mad

It's getting like fecking mumsnet on here

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/telly_addicts/a2287597-Silent-Witness

I think someone explained it pretty well in the main Silent Witness thread. The other three regulars are listed in the titles so it means she has 4th billing.

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?p=76587183

Well done, Crisp.

I haven't watched Witless Silence for years.

Btw, what is your username on mumsnet?

The introduction of the Clarissa character was surely the 'apex moment' when we chart the progression (or more accurately regression) of SILENT WITNESS into a drama reconstructed as 'fit for purpose' by the BBC's Equality and Diversity department.

Don't you just love the way that all the other characters have kept the straightest of faces when interacting with her from Day 1? Even the most un-reconstructed hairy-ar$ed career copper is held spellbound by her seemingly boundless and unquestioned knowledge on all matters from ballistics, to soil content, to hairline fractures on 600 B.C era Etruscan vases found at woodland crime scenes.

I think the BBC's Diversity department can do better though. Surely one day we must finally learn that Dr Nikki Alexander is not the ice-cool blonde of our erotic fantasies, but actually a former psychotic South African back-row forward (or maybe an East End Boxing sort) who has had some sort of operation to become a Pretendy Woman.

Come on BBC, you know you want to.

Obsessed

This week's Silent Witness story is the best so far, at least after the first episode, but this is partly due to the story being a rattling good yarn with ambiguous good/bad cops, a bit like Line of Duty.

what is the point you are making alun - are you complaining about the character or the fact that the programme makers decided to cast a disabled person in that role? 

Hi Mr Badger, I quite like the character. Stays in the lab, does her job professionally, has some decent lines, and doesn't get involved in the ridiculous antics that the others traditionally have. No doubt that will have to change.

What I completely fail to understand is why it is now virtually compulsory for what seems like EVERY BBC drama to have storylines and characters that would meet the full approval of the Equality and Diversity department? Is that the ONLY way that new dramas get green-lighted today? 

I could give chapter and verse about all manner of absurd plot developments and unlikely token characters parachuted into dramas, particularly ones set in the first half of the 20th century, pre-Political Correctness. All of theses dramas generally involving homosexual,black or foreign characters. Just off the top of my head I could mention absurdities in, e.g. The Land Girls, WPC56, Father Brown, the tragic Upstairs Downstairs re-make, but there are many others too.  Even the Dickensian costume dramas are not immune from what look like heavy-handed attempts at  "positive discrimination"  (i.e. discrimination).

This series of 'Silent Witness' has improved. much to my surprise, on more recent ones. Let's all hope that the people that commission such dramas remember the staples of plot, characterisation and dialogue remain the key elements of good drama. 

regards etc

Can't stand PC casting and tokenism, but I like Clarissa's character and think it works very well.  Jacks added an edge too.

This week's Silent Witness was utter crap.

However the earlier episode in this series, 'Falling Angels', I thought was quite good.

I made a very similar point to the wife during the early episodes but got the usual "trust you" response.

Have these coppers not got iphones? Hard to believe they would ring the office before looking for themselves.

Having said that she comes across very well and once they created a slot they could hardly just have her answering phones and passing on messages.

Jack gets shot in the spine and paralysed from the waist down ,marrys clarrisa and they ride of into the sunset to a retirement village in dorset where there neighbours are clare balding and benjamin zephanhia.

Much of this series has followed the pattern of a solid first episode followed by a rushed and messy second episode that stretches audience credulity to its limits.

Just read someone thought this storyline was the best this series, we are all entitled to our opinion, personally I thought it was complete sh!te, whereas I really enjoyed all the others.

@pumphol -- whereas I really enjoyed all the others.

Even the Russian one, with the billionaire living in a block of flats and having sex with one of its developers who was also screwing her own brother and paying off the corrupt mayor who was misdirecting the police investigation and whose daughter had infiltrated the flats on behalf of a protest group who were able to beat up the oligarch by waiting in the car park, which had not occurred to either his bodyguards or the KGB assassins who accidentally killed the mayor's daughter only to discover their target, the oligarch, had already been murdered by the developer and the body dumped by the head of security who was taking money from the KGB who had also paid a pair of destitute ex-SAS men who unfortunately shot the nanny instead?

Because I'm not sure whether it was harder to follow or swallow.

The one the other week with the social worker and 3 stories running at the same time involving children was amongst the worst rubbish I have ever seen on television.Absolute codswallop.

The daftest episode of all, from around 2 series ago, was when the team (minus Clarissa) went over to Afghanistan to do some work in a British military camp. Needless to say, the terrorists being detained in the camp for questioning were absolute poets of men, ultra-respectful to Dr Nikki (complete with her ridiculous headscarf), whilst a gormless white British herbert became a suicide bomber and took Leo to the Land of the Male Virgins Pyramid Scheme with him.

just can't have Lisa Tarbuck at all in this kind of roll.

Last time I saw Lisa Tarbuck there was only one of her, now she's two.

And Victoria Coren-Thingy ... she's gone up a size or two.

Maybe big is the new black

I like Lisa Tarbuck, but must admit her portrayal as the hard nosed DI just seems so unconvincing.