TV Detective immediately spots crime on CCTV footage without asking for it to be rewound

A TV detective was celebrating today, after finding incriminating evidence about a crime on his first watch of newly acquired CCTV footage, without having to stand in the background and then suddenly shout 'Wait! There! Rewind that bit!'.

DCI Mike McBride, the downtrodden lead investigator in the popular police/forensic pathology procedural 'Talking Stiffs', broke with all conventions by immediately spotting his prime suspect smashing a hammer into the head of the victim just 5 seconds into watching some crystal clear colour footage.

'There you go. Bam! Oh, that's got to hurt!', said a delighted McBride. 'And look, what's that, just as he's cocking his head helpfully towards the camera? Is he pulling his wallet out of his pocket? You can see his driving licence with his photo and address on it. That's got to be helpful for us to build a case against him'.

'We were expecting an all nighter', said Rachel Jones, an overworked but incisive and clever sergeant. 'I'd spent the first half of the episode trying to obtain the footage and usually, I'd expect to be endlessly playing it through, getting more and more frustrated at the lack of evidence, and being constantly passed over for promotion, until I'm asked at midnight to just look through it again for a final time, just as McBride is about to head home to his empty flat with just a bottle of whiskey and some jazz music for company.'

'The whole team would gather round my computer, and then the boss would - from 10 metres away - spot a car in the background that we'd missed before, and I'd zoom in and work out a couple of the letters on the number plate.' continued Jones. 'We'd all spill our coffees and leg it over to the suspect's house while Mcbride hollers that all leave is cancelled for the forseeable future' But no, it's case closed and we're only just at the first ad break'.

In the next episode, McBride is surprised when a helpful pathologist provides all the important forensics on a victim in a neat folder on his desk within a couple of hours of the post-mortem. The case is solved within 10 minutes after a key witness then reveals everything she knows about the murderer in the first interview, including all those bits of information that she didn't think were important at all but which turn out to be crucial.

Image: Pixabay/mohamed_hassan

TV first as pathologist gives precise time of death

A pathologist in a TV detective series has, for the first time ever, given an absolutely precise time of death for a victim when asked at the crime scene by a pushy detective, it emerged today. The news come after nearly 10,000 episodes of dramas in which the pathologist, busying himself looking over a body, and obviously irritated by people contaminating his crime scene, has, when asked the question ‘Do we know the time of death yet?’, responded with ‘It’s far too early to tell, I’ll know more back at the lab.’

‘Dead easy this one’, said Richard McBride, a chirpy pathologist, within three minutes of the opening episode of Waking Vera’s Witness on ITV. ‘Checked body temperature, compared to norms for someone this size and age, factored in the outside temperature. Oh and he was watching the football on his phone and when he fell over after being hit on the head by someone, his body must have accidentally pressed a screenshot saying 8.26 p.m. So, time of death was 8.26 p.m.'

When asked about the cause of death, McBride was equally emphatic. ‘Definitely that hammer over there’, he said, triumphantly pointing at the blunt-ended instrument protruding from some undergrowth. ‘Look, there’s a big hammer type wound on his head, and, well, the hammer is right there with some blood on it, so I’m calling it, ok. Anything else you guys need?’

McBride confirmed that no, he didn’t need to run toxicology reports that would take two days to come back and reveal some anomalies, nor did he need to look under fingernails for signs of a fight, or check for any pre-existing conditions that might cause the victim to fall over after being dizzy and cast some doubt on the obvious explanation about 40 minutes into the show.

‘Right, if you pick him up by the legs, I’ll get his arms and we can take him back in your Landrover to save time’, said McBride to the DCI. ‘Pick up that hammer and chuck it in your boot too, will you? I’ve pinged over my report to you already. God, let’s get out of here, I’m going to throw up otherwise. I hate the sight of blood, don’t you?’.