For 29 seasons over 30 years, the BBC’s Silent Witness has tested viewers’ gullibility with a premise that involves a succession of police pathologists getting embroiled in escapades usually reserved for detective inspectors. It has become a bit of a joke, on that show, with the glamorous doctors tackling international deepfake conspiracies, underground tombs and campus shooters. It is a joke that ITV are apparently keen to borrow for their upcoming series, Winter, which tries to give a new lease of life to that preposterous premise.
Based on the popular French series Balthazar, Winter follows the exploits of forensic pathologist Ethan Winter (Richard Armitage). Winter is that rarest of things in a police procedural: a reclusive maverick who doesn’t play by the rules! He looms over a succession of corpses, deposited in his mortuary outside of Bristol. “Hello Julie,” he purrs at one, while Irma Thomas croons on the stereo. “I’m Dr Winter.” Thankfully, he’s hot, so this all seems less weird. Now, however, he has a new detective inspector, Lauren Bell (Annabel Scholey), who must adjust to his methods. She’s been transferred from the Met and seems somewhat aloof (“a bit frosty,” in the words of Jamie Kenna’s DS Daldry) but develops a formidable partnership with Winter. Yet behind their easy, flirtatious rapport, she has questions about the pathologist. Not least: what really happened to his murdered fiancée, whose ghost keeps appearing in the flat where she died?
