Silent Witness (BBC1):

"CAN I do anything? I'm Home Office certified?," asked the new girl in the mortuary as Silent Witness attempted to fill the gap left by the departure of Professor Sam Ryan, the woman who'd mastered the art of the glacial stare as she rummaged around inside corpses in particular and other people's lives in general.

Now we have Nikki Alexander, played by the pert and pleasing Emilia Fox in a succession of figure-hugging shirts and tight jeans. This is a great improvement on old stony-faced Sam and just what's needed now the department is headed up by a pair of boring chaps named Leo and Harry.

They arrive to find Nikki cleaning her teeth in the mortuary, where she's left food and bones strewn all around. She is - wait for it - a forensic anthropologist and has come to borrow these criminal investigators' software for her facial reconstruction of Iron Age men.

"I only want you for your software," she tells them impishly, as the rest of us contemplate how to get Nikki interested in our hardware.

Her presence in the lab proves invaluable when Leo and Harry investigate the death of a jockey and his horse. This turns out to be part of an elaborate betting scam that only Nikki understands. She's clearly more than a "fiver each way in the 3.30" type of girl.

"Where did you learn all that?," inquired Leo or Harry (it's difficult to remember which is which they're both so bland).

"I'm attracted to the wrong sort of blokes," replied Nikki, crushing the hopes of all the right sort of blokes.

Nobody was remotely attracted to the chap fished out of the Thames with his guts cut out, his hands cut off and his face mutilated beyond recognition - until Nikki got to work with her facial reconstruction skills.

What with a helicopter crash, a doctor forced at gunpoint to perform surgery on a dead man and a policeman who liked to fabricate evidence, this story was certainly perkier than the horse than ended up on the mortuary slab.

The sight of the dead beast on its back with its legs sticking up in the air while an autopsy was performed resembled a surreal sketch out of Monty Python. Only the brusque, no-nonsense comments of the woman performing the autopsy brought me back to earth. "Right, let's take a look at his rectum," she said, bringing back painful memories of Cosmetic Surgery Live.

It all ended happily - apart from for the horse and the man dragged from the Thames - especially for fans of Emilia Fox. Leo (or was it Harry?) offered her a job. I anticipate that life in the mortuary is going to be much jollier now.

Published: 21/09/2004