The thirty-ninth TV Show: #532 Silent Witness
There are a bunch of crime shows on this list, and a lot of them on TV. One thing that is already becoming clear when it comes to these, is that they need their own angle to have them stand out. For a lot of them, it's the force of character of one of the leading roles, while others pick a specific area to focus on. The latter is less seen these days - we more tend to see them follow the Sherlock Holmes model - but here it's present. Silent Witness focuses on solving crimes using forensic evidence and while it has a central characters in the first few season, once Amanda Burton leaves it becomes an ensemble piece. This is its weakness - as another part of the story is how it impacts the main character, diluting it makes things a bit less effective. For that reason, we focused on early seasons and the hand over.
These have been incredibly engaging, darker and more difficult to watch than most other shows. The reality of this work is messy, that comes through, but the stoyrlines themselves also embrace it. All are two parters, with the cliffhanger at the end of the first part usually including another death that makes things worse. It's engaging and rarely fails to shock - at least so far.