Silent Witness return date confirmed as hit series comes back for season 28

Season 28 will see the newly engaged couple return as the Lyell Centre team tackle more tricky cases, with the season set to consist of five new stories, each unfolding over a double-header as usual.

Meanwhile there are also a couple of new faces set to join the cast this time out, with Maggie Steed (Rivals) playing the new head of The Lyell Centre, Harriet Maven, while Francesca Mills (The Witcher: Blood Origin, Worzel Gummidge) will play Kit Brooks, a crime analyst who works with Jack.

It's not yet clear whether Alastair Michael, Aki Omoshaybi and Rhiannon May will be reprising their roles as Velvy Schur, Gabriel Folukoya and Cara Connelly from season 27.

According to an official BBC synopsis, the new season will open with a disturbing mystery, when the death of an elderly woman found in a cave has the team asking what drives a person to murder someone so vulnerable.

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For a long time, fans of the of the long-running crime drama have usually been able to count on a new season early in the New Year, and although there were pandemic-enforced changes to that schedule in 2021 and 2022, it's now been back in its usual slot for a couple of years.

And we already know that the show's future is secure for at least one more season, with the 2026 series having begun pre-production in Birmingham and filming expected to begin early next year.

Silent Witness season 28 will begin airing on Monday 6th January 2025 at 9pm on BBC One, with the second episode set to air on Tuesday 7th January at 9pm.

All 27 seasons of Silent Witness are available to stream now on BBC iPlayer.

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