Cause Of Death

Channel 5, 9pm

Dr James Adeley (right) has the most grimly fascinating job: as the senior coroner for Lancashire, his working life is devoted to working out the cause of death for a variety of cases. Now cameras have been allowed to join him behind the scenes over a period of six months for a dark but compelling documentary series.

In the opening episode there’s a puzzling mystery after two elderly men are found with serious head injuries in the middle of a road. One dies, while the other has no memory of the events before they were discovered, and it’s up Adeley to work out what happened.

Elsewhere, an unidentified man is found unconscious in a pub garden and is later pronounced dead in hospital. The question is not only the cause of death, but also whether he might be a missing person a family has been searching for. ★★★★★