Waking the Dead VIII - Magdalene 26

How long do BBC scriptwriters spend on re-reading and tweaking their scripts? Really.

Now, I've never really seen the appeal of Waking the Dead (aside from the suits that Spencer used to wear a few seasons ago, and Sue Johnstone's chemistry with Trevor Eve). My mum likes it. I watched this one because my friend (whose opinion in these things I trust) recommended it. He shares a birthday with my mum, so must be trustworthy.

I ask my earlier question because this two-parter – the opening of Season Eight – felt lazy and slapdash. After seven Seasons, you'd think they'd have got the hang of it. There are problems riddling this script, like the maggots that riddle the corpse found hanging from a ceiling in this poor woman's house. Incidentally, who was that bloke? That's one plot strand left dangling, along with any attempt at explaining the car crash that leaves Lisa Hogg's naked character running through the woods with no memory.

I'm pretty confident that I remember seeing perhaps the first ever Waking the Dead – or at least, one in which the team were moving into new offices, being introduced to each other and a lot of time was spent explaining what constituted a 'cold case' and why the dead often needed waking. That sort of thing saved a lot of time when New Tricks needed to do some similar background work. That episode also saw the arrival of French DS Stella (Felicite De Jeu), a handy person who – like the audience – didn't know exactly what was going and needed everything explaining. I point this out because at the start of Season Eight, the team seem to be moving into new offices...ones identical to the ones they've been using up 'til now. Despite the initial set-up where Johnstone struggles to locate her office, it's not followed up. There are apparently no more office issues worth mentioning, and everything flows smoothly. Very smoothly. Too smoothly, in fact. These guys are far too efficient to be plausible. Their forensic checks – conducted by their one forensic scientist (Tara Fitzgerald) – seem to be over in the blink of an eye. Handy, in a crime drama that focusses on DNA and old crime scenes.

Without wanting to give too much away...for a show about coppers whose Modus Operandi (is it inappropriate to use that in reference to the Police?) centres on DNA, is it not a bit of a cop-out to throw in identical twins? Is this a gimmicky attempt to keep the show fresh and interesting? Throwing in the one thing likely to confuse DNA testing...there aren't many things that should hold up an investigation along those lines, apart from not having enough evidence (and that does not exciting TV make). The problem could be that we as an audience are shown the wrong twin's set of memories, meaning that one twin magically appears partway through, and we've been following the wrong one. Maybe the twin sister thing just seems silly, but then it's fine when Wilky Collins does it in The Woman in White.

Then there's Stella. Again, I don't want to give anything away, but the poor girl deserves better. I don't just mean from her colleagues who fail to appreciate her until she's on a hospital bed. Her story is disgustingly rushed and hustled to a conclusion that is completely unnecessary and smacks of an actress' expedient writing out of a series because of contractual issues.

Being no expert on Turkish Mafia-type gang culture or Arab oil fields, I hesitate to label the villains of this piece as stereotypes, or even as bad villains. But they do seem to be exactly everything you'd expect from nasty Turkish immigrants who really shouldn't be trusted (especially with white women). On a similar note, why is the only priest in 1960s Soho an Irishman? It's confusing when the other two characters seen then have just fled Ireland, to Soho, and our only clue that this has happened is said priest (whose Irishness makes it hard to believe they've gone anywhere).

Maybe Waking the Dead is something you only watch for Trevor Eve being rude, and not for a story. Is he rude enough to just bully a Turkish gangster into doing what he wants, though? And is all the shooting really necessary? Won't anybody back in Turkey be a bit annoyed about that – and how will that boss be found if the people that can identify him have been killed?

So many problems jumping up. Don't think about it too much, just watch Boyd and Grace (Eve and Johnstone).