User Reviews

This clever episode confirms that Silent Witness can survive without the brilliant Amanda Burton and is in the very good hands of "Leo and Harry" with Emilia Fox ready to sparkle in her role as Nicki, who appears temporarily in their morgue to work on ancient bones but quickly becomes a solid member of the team.

The plot outline at the top of the page for this episode mentions a train crash, as does the synopsis shown further down. These are both showing here incorrectly - they belong with the episode after next "Body 21". The reviews and cast details are all correct and apply, as they should, to the second part of Death by Water.

Watching this episode in a re-run where both parts had been fused into one feature length piece, it's quite hard to know where the original part two began. Sometimes with Silent Witness it is quite obvious, but not here. Assuming the break came with the baby's death then...

Anton Lesser's character, in what really turns out to be the B plot, is awful and unfortunately probably true to life. There do sometimes seem to be all too many people willing to believe the worst of a woman whose baby has died. However, our heroes save the day, mostly. Not sure the child's father feels that much better - hope he gets some help!

The conclusion of the main story is pretty exciting to be honest. Other events do turn out to be connected and there's a bit of a mad dash at the end to prevent further loss of life. One more casualty though, someone whose actions probably save lots of other people.

It was surprisingly tense, waiting for Leo to get the top job, despite this show being very old now and KNOWING he does get it! Maybe that's a me thing, lol.

Despite, for my preference, rather too much squabbling between Leo and Harry, this is a good solid episode and shows that Silent Witness was - is - going to be just fine without Sam.