{"id":10863,"date":"2012-05-28T08:30:15","date_gmt":"2012-05-28T07:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/?p=10863"},"modified":"2012-05-28T08:30:15","modified_gmt":"2012-05-28T07:30:15","slug":"silent-witness-s15-calm-down-dear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2012\/05\/28\/silent-witness-s15-calm-down-dear\/","title":{"rendered":"Silent Witness s15: ‘Calm down, dear…’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Silent Witness<\/a><\/strong> has just finished broadcasting its 15th series and, I\u2019ll be truthful, I\u2019ve been watching it for quite a few years. I\u2019ve also been a bit of a fan of Emilia Fox<\/a> for some years too – since seeing her in Reeves and Mortimer\u2019s rehash of Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased)<\/a><\/strong> as Marty\u2019s almost-bride Jeannie, left at the altar as he plunged to his death. She’s always played strong women in everything I\u2019ve seen her in, from Morgause in Merlin<\/a><\/strong> to the new Gordon\u2019s Gin advertisement <\/a><\/strong>where she deftly puts one Mr Glenister<\/a> (aka Gene Hunt) in his place.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

Emilia Fox as Dr. Nikki Alexander doing a brilliant representation of my Unimpressed Face<\/p><\/div>\n

She’s a great actress who I think does a lot for Women In Telly, so I was a bit disappointed with the way Dr Nikki Alexander (Fox\u2019s character) has been portrayed in this series of Silent Witness.<\/strong><\/p>\n

***Quick spoiler warning goes here.***<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ll get to Nikki, but I also wanted to mention that I\u2019ve been a bit dismayed at the BBC\u2019s dumbing-down of the series with woeful stereotypes akin to Channel 4\u2019s recent \u201cLet\u2019s just cause a hoohah to get viewers\u201d strategy. Every episode of Silent Witness<\/strong> this series has pretty much screamed \u2018The Police are incompetent and corrupt and evil!\u2019. Topical? You could argue that, but the way they\u2019ve tackled it has been very clumsy and unsophisticated – not like the Silent Witness<\/strong> of previous years. Plus I haven\u2019t heard of any police violently sexually assaulting pimps in public toilets with long wooden implements to death<\/em> and then covering it up recently – have you?<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve also thrown in the old \u2018people who play violent video games are all psychopathic killers\u2019 trope – in the first episode no less – which left me with a well defined Unimpressed Face. Really, BBC? You want to play with such obvious<\/em>, ill-informed, stereotypes? Disappointing.<\/p>\n

They certainly haven\u2019t done much for the female figures in this series either, with three suicides, all colleagues or friends of Leo, two of which were women and neither of which were portrayed very well. One also apparently found the draw of Leo\u2019s soft gaze too hard to resist and snogged his face off in a lab despite, her being married and him in a long-term relationship.<\/p>\n

The second was a pathologist who challenged a post mortem conclusion of Shaken Baby syndrome (also, quite topical<\/a>) who Leo took personal action against to make her look like an illogical, flustered fool by using his influence as Head of the Royal Society of Pathologists to say \u201cnah, she\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nikki studied under this particular LadyPatho and was quick to defend her, but the script made both women look as if they\u2019d been stranded in swathes of stereotypically female overemotionality. It felt like the Beeb had attempted to suggest science is Man\u2019s Domain, what with the way they aired Nikki\u2019s protests that LadyPatho was being purposefully railroaded by a patriarchal pathologist hierarchy, whom she had dared to go against by suggesting something other<\/em> than their fave shaken baby triad<\/a> might exist as a cause of infant death.<\/p>\n

The potential of this, however, is totally undermined by the acting instructions Fox seems to have followed. By making an accomplished, strong, independent female pathologist who we know – from many years of her gracing our screens – to be a sensible, balanced and intelligent individual, behave in a disorientated, desperate, hysterical, conspiracy-theory, \u2018the men are out to get us\u2019<\/em> way sort of undermines the whole attempt at a feminists-in-the-mainstream angle. Or just, y\u2019know, that whole taking women seriously thing.<\/p>\n

It is difficult for me to accept Emilia Fox’s performance as a betrayal of Nikki, but realistically I don\u2019t see how she could have agreed to play the scene that way without going against Nikki\u2019s intrinsic character. That is certainly disappointing. The series\u2019 new obsession with Lowest Common Denominator dross (probably ordered down through the BBC management levels in order to win some more viewers in these austere times) is also highly disappointing. Though the stories have been, generally, interesting enough, Silent Witness still feels like it’s strayed from its path.<\/p>\n

I hope that, for next year\u2019s series, the BBC drop this new Ch4-esque manifesto for just being offensive and shallow in order to viewer-grab away from whatever reality talent show rubbish is on elsewhere. If needs be, just move it to BBC4 and make it a clever criminal show again – it’ll fit in nicely alongside The Bridge<\/strong> and other similarly intelligent drama that treats women with a little bit more respect. There\u2019s no excuse now that analogue TV no longer exists: we\u2019ve all got the digital channels and there\u2019s always iPlayer (even on your Xbox now)!<\/p>\n