Medical Detectives - Geheimnisse der gerichtsmedizin

This is undeniably one of the best crime shows on TV. It's approach on suspense is top-notch and the wonderful narration is haunting. These are real life cases, with some reenactments, and it shows you how the crimes get solved with reliable forensics.

It's structure is simple. We open up to a place where it gives us back-story on the victim. Then, there's a killer on the loose and the police turn to science for help. Usually, it ends on a good note, it's predictable yet hypnotic. Justice is served, so it ends with closure for the family & friends of the victim(s) and satisfaction for law enforcement. An excellent message to its target audience!

UPDATE: the show is not on YouTube, watch it when you get a chance! I recommend viewing it at night time in the dark, it makes the show so interesting.

Episode after episode, year after year, this program has been entertaining. It almost never fails. There is a reason it has been on the air for 15 years.

After watching a few episodes, I became hooked....and, yes, this is an addicting show. I found myself watching over a hundred shows (my DVR had a workout) in two months. I'm sure many others have found themselves doing the same.

Why is this show good? First, it is true crime, not some fictional story; second, it runs only a half hour. Crime shows that are an hour long often repeat stuff over and over. A half hour is perfect. Third, the cases are always interesting. They leave you shaking your head in disbelief that people actually do some of these things reported in here. Fourth, Peter Thomas is excellent as the narrator. His is a voice which never offends, or gets old.

Currently, it can be seen regularly on the HNN cable network.

I had previously written about how much I enjoyed Quincy and this show certainly reminds me of it. A great episode every week about the wonderous advances in science that allows us to put people away. It wasn't so many years ago that a lot of the perpetrators on this show would never have been convicted. Each episode is crisp and compact and the guy who narrates it has the best storyteller voice that I have ever heard. The only thing is that this show makes you realize that there are some pretty sick people in the world who do terrible things. One episode was about a woman named Peggy Carr whose soda was poisoned by her nieghbor. He gave her a poison that destroys the central nervous system and is one of the few of its kind for which there is no effective antidote. She died the most painful death you can possibly imagine and her whole family became sick as well.

This is my favorite true crime show. It doesnt go overboard with the reenactments, and I always learn something new each time. After a few episodes you get to know the formula, but that doesn't make it any less interesting. This is probably my favorite way to relax after a long day, which sounds strange, but the narrator's calming/ slightly cheesy voice and the super 90s background music help me tune out the world and relax. There are like 400 episodes, but I will keep rewatching them forever because no other true crime show gets me like this one.

This show tells true crime stories of how the use of forensic evidence, from the identification of fingerprints to examining hair, and from tracking barcodes to tracking phone records, can lead to the location and capture of suspects. Each half-hour episodes start off with a mystery of an unsolved crime - intriguing and suspenseful. It then leads to a thrilling hunt of the criminal and the forensic attempts at tying the evidence to a suspect.

Peter Thomas does a great job in narrating each episode, making each story foreboding. It's sad to see the evil acts a person inflicts on another, but with forensic evidence, it comes to show that there is no perfect crime and certainly these criminals can't get away with murder.

Grade A