DEATH becomes her

As Silent Witness celebrates its 21st series, star Emilia Fox reveals why she still adores its grisly plots – and that this time her character’s finally found love

Ashow about dead bodies and the scientists who slice into them to reveal their secrets – it’s not the most obvious pitch for a world-beating success. But

Silent Witness is reaching landmark after landmark.

Now in its 21st series, the show is the longest-running crime drama currently airing in the world. It screens in an amazing 235 territories, while still regularly attracting more than six million UK viewers, who love its mixture of whodunnit, forensic science and somewhat dysfunctional pathologists.

Amanda Burton may have been there at the start but for the last 13 years it’s been helmed by Emilia Fox as self-contained Dr Nikki Alexander, who always spots the culprits, however devious their plans.

‘I always said I would stay with the show as long as I loved it and feel the same today as I did when I started,’ says Emilia during a break from filming on the show’s main east London set. It is here that all the scenes are filmed of the forensic pathologist’s workplace, the Lyell Centre; next door to the room in which we’re chatting there are several scarily realistic prosthetic dead bodies – the silent witnesses of the title.

‘I love the opportunity of making five two-hour films each year,’ adds Emilia. ‘I love the science side of it, I love the character side of it and as an actor it feels like a luxury getting to play a character and know her so well. Nikki Alexander is very much part of my life.’

The show, which was first broadcast in 1996 – the year before Midsomer Murders began – was created by former policeman Nigel McCrery and was based on the story of Professor Helen Whitwell, a forensic pathologist from Sheffield with whom he’d worked.

Emilia says it’s not just the yearly dipping into playing a pathologist which has made Nikki become so much a part of her. The experience of playing someone so closely aligned to death has changed her too. ‘When I first started I went to a few postmortems and one really stuck with me,’ she recalls. ‘It was a boy and a very untimely death. He was in the prime of his life and if you had said to him a few days earlier what might happen he would never have believed it. And I came away thinking that you have to make the most of every second. Life is short when you see it like that.’

Over the 13 years Nikki, helped by her colleagues – currently fellow pathologists Jack ( David Caves), Clarissa ( Liz Carr) and Thomas (Richard Lintern) – has managed to escape all sorts of experiences with killers, but the nail-biting finale of the last series was the most dangerous yet, with Nikki buried alive by a drugs cartel in Mexico while investigating the disappearance of a Emilia Fox as Nikki and (below) Nikki and new lover Matt Garcia former colleague. Clearly, she survived, and this week’s second of five two-part stories sees her examining the death of a young woman whose husband becomes the prime suspect when he’s found covered in blood.

As the series progresses we even see a rare bit of happiness for the unlucky-in-love pathologist. ‘Obviously she’s just been buried alive so she’s still struggling with that, but I wanted to balance that with the fact that you appreciate life when you’ve been through trauma,’ says Emilia. ‘So something happens where she meets someone and you actually see Nikki smiling. She hasn’t had a relationship for many years, which is often commented on. And normally partners end up dying or being wrong ’uns. I’ve been asking for her to find someone every series.’

Enter American diplomat Matt Garcia, played by Michael Landes, who starred in Sky’s action series Hooten And The Lady. He emerges in the third story, but is still around for the fifth chapter, set several months later. ‘It’s funny because I came here to do a crime show but they fall in love and there’s a big element of a Richard Curtis movie,’ Michael jokes.

One reason for the show’s longevity is that it manages to reflect current trends and politics – and sometimes predicts them. Last year there was a story about immigration which aired in the aftermath of the Brexit vote. This year there is an episode about cyber crime and the NHS which was written months before the health service was hacked.

‘Silent Witness isn’t afraid to tackle difficult subjects and it creates a conversation among viewers,’ says Emilia. ‘This year there’s been a focus on changing the look of the show, making it bigger. Our stories continue to mine things that haven’t been looked at before, and that’s extraordinary on a crime show, so it’s something to be celebrated that we’ve got to our 21st year.’