Serial killers

Serial Tuesday, TVB Pearl's three-hour commitment to made-for-television drama, has begun to grow stale. The line-up has changed from time to time, but the replacement of ER by NYPD Blue by The X-Files by Millennium or La Femme Nikita, all highly rated American shows, is starting to feel like musical chairs, rather than bold programming.

So the long overdue decision to include a non-American drama in the slot is very welcome. Silent Witness (Pearl, 9.30 pm) contains most of the ingredients that should give it broad appeal: good-looking central character who always gets it right, lots of blood-thirsty murders, and plot lines that require thought but not too much.

It is, however, British and despite considerable success in Britain, this show has not yet made a ratings impact in Hong Kong. There was the usual hard core of mainly expatriate fans who were delighted with the show when it was first screened here, several years ago, but these kind of viewers don't show up on the Peoplemeter system.

This third series does kick off with one cast member who has in the past worked miracles in promoting British drama abroad: a famous university town setting.

Our good-looking, infallible central character, pathologist Dr Sam Ryan (Amanda Burton) apparently completed her education at Cambridge, and she has gone back to give a talk about dead bodies.

The first 10 minutes are part scene-setter, and part advert for the British Tourist Board. Sam walks up an impossibly charming Cambridge street, rowers grunt their way down the Cam. Eventually we even get to see a May Ball in progress complete with some lovely night shots of the college, and Sam and her new bloke have a snog in the quad.