WHILE it is wonderful to have the very excellent 12th season of Silent Witness on TV One on a Wednesday night, it's annoying to have it screening after the late news.

Give us a break - this is quality television, so why so late? Sure, French and Saunders mocked the show in a skit called Witless Science, and it has also been parodied on Dead Ringers, because of viewers having to believe that forensic pathologists leave the laboratory and wander off to do the detective work, but that's what happens in all the lurid and tasteless CSIs.

When Emilia Fox joined the cast of Silent Witness in 2004, she had big shoes to fill. As Dr Nikki Alexander, Fox - with her long, straight blond hair and pinched face - looked somewhat tapewormish compared with the full-blown rose looks of Professor Sam Ryan (Amanda Burton), aka the thinking man's crumpet.

Burton was a commanding force, replica breitling which is why she moved on to star in The Commander, Lynda La Plante's somewhat disappointing attempt to create a ballsy female equal to Prime Suspect's Jane Tennison. Commander Clare Blake didn't hide her weaknesses, but her appetite for bedding bad boys (eg, a serial killer under investigation) and her secretary's husband made it hard for the viewer to show her respect.

Without Burton at the helm, the hugely rating Silent Witness was looking a little shaky, but it has survived because the storylines and the acting (in particular, the performances turned in by Fox) have been consistently good, and the hairstyles aren't bad either. Fox, who has gone from palaeontologist to pathologist, and from to blonde to chestnut, has the best dos for long hair on television.

Sorry to be shallow, but it gives you something to fascinate upon when you don't want to be peering at the exposed chest cavity of another corpse on the slab.

The show pops up from time to time on UKTV, but fans have their hopes repeatedly dashed when they realise that these episodes are as old as Jeyes toilet paper.

Ditto my favourite show, Trial and Retribution, starring the top actor of all time on the giggle box, David Hayman, and the deeply unlikeable but fascinating Victoria Smurfit. And while we're at it, Wire in the Blood on a Saturday night has also been a load of old episodes.

Come on, Sky. We are paying to watch this channel, so we should be getting episodes and series straight out of post-production, not stuff that's been on the loop since pussy was a kitten.

In this week's first episode of the new series of Breaking Bad (C4, Monday), when Walt White, chemistry teacher and methamphetamine (P) maker, came home from a grisly altercation with the violent psychopathic drug dealer Tuco, he turned on the television and just stood there shell-shocked, flicking through the channels. He couldn't find anything to watch either.

Seriously, however, this drama is not an easy watch, and for anyone fancying themselves as an amateur P cook, Breaking Bad graphically demonstrates how there is no recourse to justice when you're dealing with scum as volatile as Tuco.

Walt's got lung cancer and has only a couple of years to live, his son is disabled, and his wife, Skyler, has a bun in the oven - hence the need to make a pile to provide for everyone when he's gone. The bleak desert and the arid neighbourhood where the Whites live make you wonder why anyone would want to keep living. Indeed, Walt looks so tired and worried that he could do with an early visit from the Grim Reaper.

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