I’m an English teacher, not fucking Tomb Raider

It’s strange, the things you see on television. And I don’t mean on that home of the weird and exploited, C4, but on your mainstream, prime time telly. Last night we watched Silent Witness. Now, I’m not a huge fan, it is more ‘dmother’s sort of thing. She likes her crime dramas. But anyways, I wasn’t in Sligo which is where I’ve seen the odd episode before, but there was nothing else on. Or we weren’t bothered flicking. Something like that^[1]

The BBC are currently showing repeats, these were all on last year, the one last night was called Schism and featured an animal rights group raiding an experimentation lab, in connection with tests that they were doing trying to find a vaccine for H5N1. Remember that do you? The bird flu that was going to bring an end to all humankind. Well it is only killing furrin types, so mothing to worry about.

Back to the show. The strange thing was that in the end [spoilers ahoy, but it isn’t really a spoilery show so not hiding them] this mainstream, prime-time show^[2] showed young girls being totured and killed, by state agents. Okay, so they never came out and said “working for the govt” but the anti-terror dude who showed up^[3] to investigate was clearly id’d as a spook,. That’s not the US racist slang word, btw, it just means spy.

So here we have a programme showing extremist animal activists being killed by big business/medicine/government agencies. And not in an X-Files, conspiracy-type show, but an average, everyday, crime show.

I’m still not particularly fond of the show, the characters are a little meh, but the plots are vaguely interesting, and kudos for the showing of dead bodies, nipples and all without ever seeming over the top, or gratuitous.

While I’m here, I see that Neil Marshall’s The Descent has finally been released in the states. This was out here^[4] last year, but has had its ending snipped for the US release, and is prompting much discussion over at Rogerebert.com