Waking the Dead (TV series)
Waking the Dead is a British television police procedural crime drama series, produced by the BBC, that centres on a fictional London-based cold case unit composed of CID police officers, a psychological profiler and a forensic scientist. A pilot episode aired in September 2000, and a total of nine series followed. Each story is split into two hour-long episodes, shown on consecutive nights on BBC One. A third series episode won an International Emmy Award in 2004. The programme was also shown on BBC America in the United States, though these screenings are edited to allow for advertising breaks, as well as UKTV in Australia and New Zealand and ABC1 in Australia. A total of 46 stories aired across the nine series. The show aired its final episode on 11 April 2011. A spin-off from the series, titled The Body Farm, revolving around forensic scientist Eve Lockhart (Tara Fitzgerald), was announced by the BBC in January 2011 and ran for just one series.
This article is about the BBC series. For the film, see Waking the Dead (film).Waking the Dead
Barbara Machin
Joe Campbell
United Kingdom
English
9
92 (list of episodes)
Alexei de Keyser
Patrick Spence
Susan Hogg
Anne Pivcevic
Colin Wratten
Mike Spragg
Adam Trotman
60 minutes
BBC Drama Group
4 September 2000 –
11 April 2011
In 2018, a five-part radio prequel to the series, The Unforgiven, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4, with Sue Johnston, Claire Goose, Wil Johnson and Holly Aird reprising their roles. All five episodes were written by series creator Barbara Machin. Anthony Howell replaced Trevor Eve in the role of Peter Boyd.[1]
Plot[edit]
Overview[edit]
The programme follows the work of a special police team that investigates cold cases, which usually concern murders that took place a number of years in the past, and were never solved. The team, composed of head officer Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd (Trevor Eve), psychological profiler Grace Foley (Sue Johnston), Detective Inspector Spencer Jordan (Wil Johnson), as well as a number of other supporting characters, uses evidence which has recently come to light, as well as contemporary technology to examine former evidence.
Initially, Boyd, Grace and Spence were accompanied by junior DC Mel Silver (Claire Goose), and stern forensic scientist Frankie Wharton (Holly Aird), however both left after the end of the fourth series. Felix Gibson (Esther Hall) and Stella Goodman (Félicité du Jeu) replaced them in the fifth series, before Eve Lockhart (Tara Fitzgerald) replaced Felix from the sixth series onwards. Katarina Howard (Stacey Roca) replaced Stella in series eight, while Sarah Cavendish (Eva Birthistle) replaced Katarina in series nine. Although the plotlines generally centre around the case, other storylines have been incorporated across the years, including Boyd's anger management issues and his being re-united with his son, Grace suffering from cancer, Spencer being shot at the hands of one of his former colleagues, and Mel's death, which creates a chain of events lasting across two series.
The show also addressed sensitive issues such as fanaticism within different religions, international organised crime, child abuse within the Catholic church, war crimes in Bosnia, forced child labour, torture, homophobia and racism. The BBC issued disclaimers twice on the show when it touched upon issues sensitive to the Labour government of the time (once about banking frauds within the City of London establishment and once about the involvement of the UK in the Iraq war). Some of the issues were dealt with through the conflicting views of Peter Boyd (a white middle-class liberal) and Spencer Jordan (a black working-class conservative).
The Body Farm, a spin-off revolving around forensic scientist Eve Lockhart (Tara Fitzgerald), produced by Trevor Eve and made by his production company Projector, was commissioned by the BBC. However, after poor ratings and reviews, it was cancelled after one series.
Reception[edit]
The first series secured strong ratings, with "Burn Out" receiving 8.4 million viewers and a 38% audience share.[4] Persistently high ratings meant the programme was recommissioned each year for either the summer or winter schedule. The sixth series began with strong ratings, with "Wren Boys" achieving 9.2M viewers and a 35.2% audience share.[5] The second part dropped to 8.6M, but still gained a 33% audience share.[6] Following the successful transmission of the third series and an International Emmy Award nomination for "Special Relationship" written by Stephen Davis and directed by David Thacker, a further two series were commissioned with the number of stories expanded from four to six.[7] Waking the Dead won an International Emmy Award the following year for "Breaking Glass", written by Stephen Davis and directed by Maurice Phillips, and "Multistorey", written by Ed Whitmore and directed by Bob Bierman.[8]