Silent Witness - Series 16

A very powerful series, displaying its strength and integrity.

Initially the series has to deal with the departure of Harry Cunningham played by Tom Ward who left the show between this and the last series and his replacement in the form of Jack does work well to bring another aspect to the show. Although not the most likable character, his knowledge and work in forensics brings an interesting new side to the investigations especially in the first story where the techniques he used were effectively created and made to look stylised and interesting. Moreover, this interaction with established characters Nikki Alexander and Leo Dalton worked well. The addition of Jack's assistant Clarrisa Mullery also helped to strength the team and to allow for more of the technically side to come out.

The stories in this series were, as ever, dark, gritty and poignant. The first story, Change, saw the lengths someone would go in order to secure the future of a suffering business, especially when faces from the past emerged. Although with this one I wasn't really sure about the sceptical attitude of the leading investigator DS Gold. The second one, Trust, saw to contrasting stories of trust where is had been abused in order to develop a deadly form of anthrax or it had been lost in the premature death of a baby believed to have been murdered but later found to have been natural causes.

The third, True Love Waits, saw the destructiveness of love as a man would do anything including murder in order to find his wife and control her life again. Within this there was a better development of the police officer character, DI Kate Warren, as she faced pressure from her high ranking father to solve the case quickly leading her to conceal evidence. Then the fourth, Legacy, revealed a conspiracy to hid a nuclear warhead that led to the deaths of two boys and the questioning of Leo's conduct by Nikki.

The final story, Greater Love, saw a lot of elements with a shock ending. It's quite a dark story, with the team going to Afghanistan to investigate human remains believed to be that of missing and presumed dead soldier Dan Lambert. The story was tense as it twisted and turned and often my suspicions over what really happened and who was responsible would shift from terrorists to rogue British soldiers. It also tried to highlight the motives behind terrorists through Nikki's interaction with some Taliban prisoners, one of which was later identified as Lambert having been forced to join and brainwashed. It ended in a very dramatic way as Lambert was forced to be a suicide bomber in order to destroy the water project, but Leo sacrifice himself by leading Lambert away before the blast took place.

William Gaminara is superb in his final series, along with great performances from Emilia Fox, David Caves and Liz Carr. The guest cast included Sharon Small, Anna Brewster, Derek Riddell, Bryan Dick, Bill Ward, Ashley Chin, Adam James, Christine Bottomley, Rob Jarvis, David Murray, Penny Downie, Ed Stoppard, Cal Macaninch, Richard Johnson, Mark Womack, Joe Doyle, Chris Reilly and Brana Bajic, who all gave good performances and made their stories unique and work well.