Silent Witness Series 12 Episodes 3 & 4 - Death's Door

This week the team are joined by a student but she’s quickly ‘dispatched’, so it’s all back to normal when part two comes along!

After a woman is murdered, her face cut off and dumped by a roadside, the team try everything to identify her. It’s grizzly stuff but that’s the pull of this programme, it doesn’t hold back!

We learn that the woman is a television personality, who had recently been on more drugs than Amy Winehouse but was in the middle of a comeback - by writing a book. That book was to about a jailed Russian gangster, who became the chief suspect in the case, lead by annoying detective – Barker (played by Neil Dudgeon).

Barker takes a shine to our pretty student (Naomi Bentley – Caroline in ‘Primeval’) and it seems she’s in hot water with her mentor, Harry, after the press get hold of some details about the investigation and she is photographed when she goes with Harry, to the woman’s house.

Meanwhile, Leo is getting on like a ‘house on fire’ with Prof. Janet (Jaye Griffiths, who also appeared in a Silent Witness episode in 2003, as a police officer), who has been attached to the case for her expertise. It isn’t long though, until they are ‘at it’!

As we come to the end of episode one, Nikki is sent to a new crime scene. Unfortunately the victim is our student, who has had her throat cut. It’s a shocking end but it gets more shocking in part two, as we learn that Barker had sex with her, the night she was murdered. Nikki didn’t come to that conclusion until testing the DNA found on her against Harry’s – who had been at her flat just before Barker.

Barker isn’t the one who ‘did it though’ but he was the one who leaked information to the press, in order to get more information from the public, about the murderer. Sadly it leads to her being photographed and she was killed because of her involvement with the case.

Shocked by her death, Harry is a man on a mission and whilst he is being shadowed by a bodyguard, he is summoned by a Russian businessman who gives him information. He says that it was the jailed gangster who ordered the killing and hands him some ‘evidence’ to prove it. He even plants £10,000 in Harry’s bank account, so he can ‘work’ for him!

We learn though, that the gangster is indeed innocent and it was the businessman who ordered the murder of the women. She was writing the book on the jailed man, who co-operated with her but he had connections with the businessman man and he would have been implicated if the book was published. Thing is though, the book was already written and stored on her laptop.

It’s too late for Mr Gangster though, as he dies after an asthma attack, inside a prison van after one of the businessman’s associate’s hands him a duff asthma inhaler.

It’s another interesting and informative episode. That’s the thing with Silent Witness – you always seem to learn stuff off it! Be it medical or law, you always get your fix! There’s a decent supporting cast too, Phil Davis also appears, playing the dead woman’s unscrupulous agent. It should be interesting to see if the relationship between Leo and Janet will continue, I reckon not because I don’t think she’s in next week’s episode! But you never know!

8/10

Next Time: Harry takes a job as a college lecturer – if he as that much of an affect on Students as he did in this story, there’ll be none left!

Ashes To Ashes - Episode 6

Phil Davis guest stars in this week’s Ashes to Ashes as aging bank robber Chas Cale, who met Gene Hunt 10 years previously, in Manchester. He got away then and now he has retried to run a restaurant in London with his wife. Gene doesn’t believe him, as he is investigating a local post office, which was robbed with all the hallmarks of a Chas Cale job.

Meanwhile Alex is feeling unwell. Her visions of ‘The Clown of Death’ don’t help much and she believes she is going to die. So her goodbye to Caroline Price seemed very uncomfortable, well to me anyway!

It turns out that Cale is too ill to do any kind of robbery, so the team are back at square one as Gene and Alex continue their slanging matches. Alex even steals Gene’s car to steal Cale’s rubbish bags for evidence! In fact Gene’s feeling ‘past it’ and goes to Luigi’s for a ‘quiet drink’, well nothing’s ever quiet in Luigi’s! The owner constantly badgers Gene to go upstairs and see Alex because ‘it’s not right that there’re both alone’. Gene eventually does and as they are having a few drinks, Chris and Ray, who are ‘undercover’ in a pub, contact Gene to tell him they may have nicked one of the bikers who robbed the post office.

We learn that the biker is looking after his nephew and when his alibi checks out, the team are nowhere again. That is until the biker turns up dead and the murder is witnessed by the young lad.

We find out that it was indeed Chas Cale who did the robbery along with the murdered man but it was his wife that was pulling the strings and she hired an hit man. Still, it looks bleak for Alex, as she is taken, tied up and shoved in a freezer, for the hit man to come and collect. But it’s Gene who comes to the rescue and after the most epic scene of ‘shooting a glass door’ I have ever seen, he gets Alex out of freezer and revives her!

It was another very good episode but I always feel uncomfortable watching the scenes between Alex and her mother. I don’t know if they are designed to be like that and it’s no criticism of the actors but I just squirm when Alex cries in front of her! It also seems the Gene-Alex love thing is on, after Gene drew a naughty picture of him, ahem, ‘doing’ Alex! She didn’t see it but Ray, Chris and Shaz did! Whoops!

8/10

Next Week – Gene finally does us a favour and kicks smarmy Evan’s head in!