It was the end every fan wanted. Finally, Nikki (Emilia Fox) and Jack (David Caves) walked down the aisle in the last moments of Silent Witness season 28. They couldn’t have been happier as they declared their love for each other at a small registry office in London — actually quite a grand registry office!
But I fear what the writers have in store for Nikki and Jack in the next series. It was revealed that Nikki has been tasked by the Home Office with setting up a center of excellence in Birmingham and that Jack’s part of the plan. It was also heavily hinted that Harriet and Kit will also be heading with them as the team moves from London to Birmingham.
So everything looks rosy, right? Wrong! TV rarely if ever can let a couple just be happy. Why? Because it generally makes for incredibly boring telly. That’s why in the episode of Netflix hit One Day when lovebirds Dexter Mayhew (Leo Woodall) and Emma Morley (Ambika Mod) finally become a couple, the 14-part series dealt with their happy years in a single episode. The makers simply couldn’t wait to get to the tragic part!
There’s one thing having Nikki and Jack looking romantically into each other’s eyes as first, they got together, then got engaged and finally got wed. But, how long is it before the viewers tire of the endless kissing and cuddling? How tempting is it going to be for the writers of Silent Witness to kill one of the characters? To see how they cope without the love of their life? With Silent Witness revolving around murders, you can imagine a scenario where say Jack dies and a heartbroken Nikki draws on all her professionalism to make sure she catches his killer.
If you really want Nikki and Jack to succeed in married life it would probably have been best if the season 28 finale was the end of the story for the pair. Perhaps Nikki and Jack could have decided they didn’t actually want to move to Birmingham. Perhaps a new star could take over from Emilia Fox as the Silent Witness lead and give it a new direction.
I’m not saying I want either of the characters to be killed off, but I do wonder now they’ve had their happy ending what the writers are going to do with them. Are we really going to watch Nikki and Jack stroll happily around a park, or in their case, probably a graveyard?
The Nikki and Jack love story has been the highlight of Silent Witness in recent times. I’m not sure how everyone would react if one of them was killed off. But at the end of the day Silent Witness is going to need a new central plot to drive it along now their story appears to have been told.
Silent Witness is available on BBC iPlayer.