History Series / SilentWitness

** [[spoiler: Umer]], a member of the gang grooming and kidnapping teen girls to be SexSlaves in "And Then I Fell In Love", who is [[spoiler: [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown beaten to death]] by the stepfather of one of his victims after she [[DrivenToSuicide committed suicide]]]].

** "Buried Lies" has [[spoiler: Gary]], an abusive drunk who [[spoiler: beats his wife and stepchildren and did the same to his ex and her baby, let his young stepdaughter drown because she was ‘annoying’ and breaks into Sam Ryan’s home, rifles through her underwear and [[{{Squick}} sniffs and burns holes into them]]]]. He winds up being [[spoiler: non-fatally stabbed by his stepson after he tries to attack the boy’s mother]].

* TheBadGuysWin: Several times. Examples include:
** "Safe": [[spoiler: The team fails to get a gang leader convicted for murder, or even for breaking dangerous dogs laws (since he illegally owned a dog that savaged one of his victims to death). The evidence finally gets him jailed for raping an underage girl, but he'll still be out sooner than he would have been with a murder conviction - and his gang is still active and grooming young boys to join them.]]
** "Commodity": [[spoiler:Terrorists got away with over two million pounds' worth of blackmail money, ended an innocent man's career by shooting him in the leg (he was a professional footballer), and will probably continue to attack Jewish/Israeli targets.]]
** Zig-zagged in "Awakening": [[spoiler: On one hand, no one from the cartel is brought to justice, Eva is murdered and the cartel still have informants inside the security detail, but on the other, the hostages, including Luisa, are rescued and Nikki escapes with her life]].

** A murder suspect in "In a Lonely Place" finds out the hard way that openly admitting to hitting, and then insulting, a recently murdered woman around Jack is a bad idea.

* {{BrotherSisterIncest}}:

* FragileFlower: Nikki

* TattooedCrook: Taken UpToEleven with El Buitre, a hitman for the local [[TheCartel cartel]] in "Awakening", who is quite literally covered from head to toe in tattoos associated with death, including a skull tattoo across his face. The tattoos are actually real as well, El Buitre being portrayed by Rick Genest, aka Zombie Boy.

* TraumaCongaLine: Nikki. First her father abandoned her as a kid and never acknowledges the emotional pain he caused her. Then her mother died when she was a teenager. She finally gets a surrogate family in the form of her co-workers, only for [[spoiler: her best friend (and possible love interest) to run off to the US for a better job]] and her father figure [[spoiler:is blown up in front of her trying to save her life. And then she gets framed for murder.]]

* TrueCompanions: Leo, Nikki and Harry in the later series. Leo implies to Nikki and Harry that they are as important to him as his (dead) wife and child.
** Jack and Clarissa, to the point where Jack's condition for coming to work at the Lyell Centre was that they hire her too.

British crime/forensic series, running from 1996 onwards, now in its twentieth series, making it the fourth oldest currently airing crime drama in the world and the longest that isn't German (''Series/{{Tatort}}'' is the winner, the German show having run since 1970).

* GenderEqualEnsembleCast: The current main cast is this: two women (Nikki and Clarissa) and two men (Thomas and Jack).

* WellDoneSonGuy: In "True Love Waits", Kate Warren is under intense pressure from her father (a very respected retired senior officer) to secure a murder conviction in order to save her own career and uphold the family name. This becomes her motivation for tampering with evidence.

* FourTemperamentEnsemble: The current cast, arguably: Nikki is usually Sanguine (though not really disorganised or self-centred), Jack is usually Choleric (though more emotional than some), Thomas is Melancholic and Clarissa is Phelegmatic.

Starred Amanda Burton for the first eight series, until her character was written out in a plot involving a reunion with her long-lost son and a trip to Northern Ireland.

The series now revolves around the activities of three (later four) Home Office pathologists (Nikki Alexander, Jack Hodgson, Thomas Chamberlain and Clarissa Mullery as of the 2014 series) as they investigate murders in London, though they sometimes help outside the city and at least one story per season will usually feature them going abroad.

** [[spoiler:the Doshi siblings in "Squaring the Circle"]]
** Teenage siblings in [[spoiler: "Domestic" (though in their defence , they didn't realise they were blood related).]]

* HugeGuyTinyGirl: A platonic example with Clarissa and Jack. Clarissa (Liz Carr) is under 5' and looks even shorter at times due to using a wheelchair, whilst Jack (David Caves) is over 6' and quite muscular.

British crime/forensic series, running from 1996 onwards, now in its nineteenth series, making it the fourth oldest currently airing crime drama in the world and the longest that isn't German (''Series/{{Tatort}}'' is the winner, the German show having run since 1970).

* BritishBrevity: Averted with the show being renewed for a 20th season to air in 2017; however, with only 10 episodes per season, each season is much shorter than an equivalent show in the US.

* TroublingUnchildlikeBehaviour: Comes up occasionally, often overlapping with HarmfultoMinors.

Could be considered a UK version of the ''Series/{{CSI}}'' franchise, but lacks its flashiness (although it has elements of the wider investigating role); it also predates it. Like ''WakingTheDead'' (which predates ''Series/{{CSI}}'' as well), it is done in two-parters, with each story shown over two days in the same week.

British crime/forensic series, running from 1996 onwards, now in its nineteenth series, making it the fourth oldest currently airing crime drama in the world and the longest that isn't German (''{{Tatort}}'' is the winner, the German show having run since 1970).