'Silent Witness' Season 28 Will Sneak onto BritBox in September

Silent Witness may be celebrating 28 years on the air, but the series is not the same show that debuted way back in the mid-1990s. The success of The X-Files led to a new "forensic psychology" subset of crime-of-the-week dramas, and this one was initially designed as a vehicle for Amanda Burton, who had recently returned from her stint across the pond to star in the Grey's Anatomy spinoff Private Practice. She left after the show had run eight seasons to head up a new police series called The Commander, which ran on ITV through 2008. Initially replaced by Emilia Fox as part of a planned move to an ensemble show, Fox took possession of the series immediately.

That was 20 years ago, in 2004. It took six seasons to find the right guy to match her, but since David Caves boarded in Season 14, the show has been the modern British equivalent of Moonlighting. Twenty seasons and two decades later, Silent Witness has become Fox's legacy, her name as synonymous with it as Mariska Hargitay's is with Law & Order. Its return to the BBC at the beginning of the year still garners big numbers, too.

However, the show has never really taken off in the U.S. That's partly due to its never airing on local PBS stations in the mid-aughts, unlike fellow long-running series Midsomer Murders, before streaming locked the rights behind a paywall. BritBox is attempting to belatedly address this by placing the most recent seasons on its "Best of" row on HBO Max, in the hope that Americans will finally get on board ahead of Season 28's debut.