Ahh, it's the dreaded nightmare of every television reviewer: a week when all that's new on the box are the umpteenth season of a pathologically bland, stuck-in-rut crime drama and a couple of daft shows about wacky pets and their even wackier owners.
The 16th - sixteenth! - series of British crime thriller Silent Witness (below), one of the BBC's longest running and most popular dramas, begins this week (BBC Entertainment, Thursday at 9.55pm).
Having first appeared on screens way back in 1996, the programme followed the activities of female pathologist Sam Ryan (Amanda Burton) and her team of forensic experts as they investigated a succession of grisly crimes. This was a few years before we were introduced to CSI and the many cop-show "procedurals" that followed, so it was groundbreaking in its depiction of the wealth of knowledge that can be deduced from an autopsy.
In 2004, Burton left the show and forensic anthropologist Nikki Alexander (Emilia Fox) was introduced, joining lead characters Leo Dalton (William Gaminara) and Harry Cunningham. At the end of last season, handsome Harry upped sticks and left the team to accept a professorship in New York, bringing an end (we assume) to his yo-yoing, decade-long romance with Nikki. This left the door ajar at the Lyell Centre for a new maverick to take his place. Enter Jack Hodgson (David Caves, pictured, centre, with Gaminara and Fox), a strapping young Irish forensic scientist and part-time cage fighter (isn't everyone these days?).
But here's the real mystery; why does anyone still watch Silent Witness? The gruesomeness as the dead bodies are hacked apart, the woody acting and the cumbrous scripts haven't really evolved over the years, and the show has become so … well … lifeless. Sure, there has been no shortage of stiffs, croaking it in more and more improbable ways, but the programme is so consistently glum and tiresome that you can only tell each season apart by referencing the support cast. Those of you who do enjoy this mundane, post-mortem detective show, though, don't panic; season 17 is under way in Britain, with No18 planned for 2015. Oh joy!