All so close to the bone

FLICK through the BBC's various offerings tonight, shortly after 9pm, and I'm afraid you're likely to stumble upon a human skeleton. Quite a dead one at that. You'll also see it being forensically examined for clues. "Who was this woman?" a lady expert is asking. "And what sort of world did she inhabit?"

- Mike Ward

If you're a regular viewer of SILENT WITNESS (BBC1, 9pm), I don't suppose any of this will come as much of a surprise to you. You'll know by now that forensic pathology person Dr Nikki Alexander is second to none when it comes to scrutinising a victim's remains, her findings key to solving each week's crime.

By the end of each story, largely thanks to her, the police are invariably in a position to pop out and arrest the killer, assuming that they don't have a more pressing engagement.