I hoped the first episodes of this new season, Season 26, were outliers. Despite having been increasingly put-off over the last several seasons, I guess I did not want to see it as a trend. Or see myself as desperate to watch this stuff.
The headline for the review I just read, "What Happened?" could not be more apt - unless one was to be downright nasty.
I found the attraction of Silent Witness to be not just the effort at rigorous science, but also the efforts to show the importance of rigorous ethics. Romance, inter-department politics, broader politics, drama, suspense, and, yes, diversity, were always involved but they were not used as gimmicks nor were they typically embellished by gimmicks - I think what another reviewer referred to as cliches and soap opera style storytelling. What another reviewer called "lazy rubbish".
I live in the US and stopped watching most American / Hollywood television and movie productions years ago. I have noticed over the last few years that too many of the British, and French and even Scandinavian productions have taken to cheap and lazy production efforts: whether it is writing, plots, themes, dialogue. After all, there is always Lifetime or Hallmark which I consider only marginally worse than the US MSM network shows..
I do not agree that it must be past its natural lifespan. Exercise rigor in writing - please.
It is disappointing.