Evening Times (Glasgow), 16 February 2001, by Brian Beacom
"Witness Amanda chills out"
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Brian Beacom Takes A Look Back Over The Week's Tv

A LOUNGE LIZARD: Anthony Head

SILENT WITNESS

BBC1, Monday HH

You remember those scenes from "Quincy," where the worldly 
pathologist would wander over to a sheet-covered corpse 
lying on a table, take a quick peek and immediately make a 
series of earth-shattering pronouncements.

"This man was killed when he was hit by a red Ferarri, 
driven by cool blonde female at four in the morning - and by 
the look on his face they'd been making love less than half 
an hour before.

"Check the list of known femmes fatales in the area and 
we'll find our gal."

Nowadays, pathologist TV series aren't quite so cutesy. In 
the opening shots of "Silent Witness" we see a body that had 
been frozen to death and the effects would have graced any 
Stephen King movie.

The wide-open screaming mouth with the missing teeth at the 
top of the bleach -white body was as ghoulish a sight as you 
will see on prime time television, and that opener took us 
closer to reality than we would dared have thought possible.

Unfortunately, the storyline and lead performance didn't.

Amanda Burton, back with the Irish accent that hasn't been 
heard since her Brookside days, is all too unconvincing as 
the scalpel-wielding sleuth.

There was a time when her very appearance could have negated 
the fact she doesn't have that many facial expressions. Not 
now - her bulky winter clothes as she trudged around the 
Norwegian snow, even helped hide her overall mumsiness.

Two English girls were found buried in ice and from that 
point a variety of guest stars were wheeled in as prime 
suspects.

The first was too obvious - he once played Adrian Mole's dad 
in the original series and later Harry Enfield's Kevin 
character's dad was too shifty by far.

Fresh from his Buffy stint, Anthony Head, playing a lounge 
lizard, was terrific but anyone with a penchant for dumping 
young women under 50 feet of snow doesn't go about touching 
them up in a pub.

What the series requires is for Sam Ryan to show some deep-
rooted Cracker-like intelligence.

But the script doesn't allow for it all and that's perhaps 
because the premise is so flawed in the first place, playing 
the role of detective - yet her occupation shouldn't allow 
for it.

One line from Monday's episode puts the whole series in 
perspective.

"Couldn't the police use one those psychologists that build 
up a picture of the murderer, like you see on TV?" asks the 
mother of one of the murder victims.

"Oh, they make it look easy on TV," says little yellow-
suited Sam. "I don't think it's really like that."

And I don't think that British pathologists go wandering the 
Norwegian country side either, with a Mounty-like 
determination to get their man.

That's what we have Interpol for. Call me silly, but Quincy 
had much more of a ring of truth to it.

SNOW MAIDEN: Amanda Burton sets off to the frozen slopes of 
Norway to investigate two grisly deaths



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