Amanda Burton is back – but is she the hero or the villain?
‘Take your time, the body’s going nowhere.” Those were the first words spoken by pathologist Sam Ryan in the first episode of Silent Witness (BBC One) back in February 1996. And she was right, the bodies have gone nowhere – the pungent parade of cadavers have amassed 212 episodes across 24 series in 26 years. Even when Ryan (Amanda Burton) left the Lyell Centre in series eight, the bodies went nowhere – more than 7million of us still tune in for Stiff of the Week.
Emilia Fox replaced Burton and even though she has racked up 166 episodes to Burton’s 54, it is still Sam Ryan who is synonymous with Silent Witness, rather than Nikki Alexander. The writers, to their credit, allowed Fox and Burton to play with this tension as they finally came face to face. While it was all smiles and winks to the camera at first – “Good to finally meet you, Nikki. You’ve done excellent work at the Lyell.” “Oh, we just built on your foundations…” – the pair were soon butting heads over a corpse as Ryan indulged in a spot of backseat pathology. That lab ain’t big enough for the both of them.
Ryan is now a private medicine bigwig, involved in a government scheme to roll out controversial “medical passports”, which gets the health secretary and her husband shot
by a sniper. It isn’t untypical of shows like this to put the suspicion on anyone and everyone, but it was particularly piquant that Ryan herself, shifty and meddling, became a person of interest in the viewers’ eyes.
This, however, also brought into sharp relief the fundamental problem with Silent Witness – Ryan was always a more compelling character than Alexander, who, though they often load her up with personal problems, is a straightforward heroine. Now, Ryan is back, and more nuanced than ever, up to her eyeballs in morally murky dealings with Big Tech that could impinge on our civil liberties and playing No 10 off against the police. Alexander, meanwhile, might finally sleep with her hunky colleague.
But what do we expect? This is a show where huge breakthroughs in investigations come via characters listlessly looking at CCTV footage and saying: “Wait… Stop. Rewind a bit. There. Can you zoom in on that? There. Do you see that?” Let’s just enjoy Burton while she’s back for these anniverary episodes and, just maybe, while she’s bad.
The best moment of Troy Deeney: Where’s My History? (Channel 4) was when someone disagreed with him. The Birmingham City striker is on a crusade to make the teaching of BAME history compulsory in all British schools. Currently, he told us, there are seven optional modules on the history syllabus that cover black history, but they are sparingly taken up by teachers. Even then, the black experience is usually reduced to being slaves or being colonised.
Yet, Deeney’s argument suffered from being a little too anecdotal. It was terrific to see celebrities lending their support and sharing their experiences – Micah Richards, Anthony Joshua, David Harewood – but he needed a voice of dissent to stress-test and sharpen his argument. Deeney got that in conservative commentator Calvin Robinson – who is mixed race, like Deeney – who told him: “I don’t think there’s such a thing as black history – black history is just British history.”
Robinson eloquently argued that if you insist on black history being taught, then why not Chinese history or Jewish history? Black history, he said, was a divisive term. Deeney, he thought, had a negative, victim mindset. For a moment, Deeney was lost for words, but he soon found them: “I’m still called a n----- by people from Britain.”
Everyone Deeney spoke to was articulate, from the schoolgirl campaigner who understood how her classmates saw her when their teacher showed the slave trade drama Roots and all eyes turned to her, the only black pupil in the class, to the students who had conducted an enormous survey that found that 72.5 per cent of British pupils learn about the Great Fire of London, while eight per cent learn about the colonisation of Africa. The programme was short of an educational or historical expert or two, but there is no doubting Deeney’s zeal.
The Government was called “tone deaf ” during the film, however it ended with Deeney having a positive meeting with the education secretary Nadhim Zahawi, so clearly someone is listening to Deeney and his peers when they say that there is not enough BAME history in the curriculum.
Why teach black history in British schools? Because it’s 2022 and Troy Deeney is still called a n----- by people from Britain.
Silent Witness ★★★
Troy Deeney: Where’s My History? ★★★