Rigor Mortis

All 18 episodes of the sitcom set in the fascinating but misunderstood world of the pathology lab.

Meet Dr Anthony Webster and Dr Ruth Anderson, two pathologists attempting to live normal lives in an atmosphere of death, decay and seriously unpleasant smells. Anthony loves his chosen profession, finding every cadaver exciting and surprising: 'they're like Kinder eggs that have died'. Ruth, however, longs for a juicy murder mystery, instead of one routine autopsy after another.

Together, they perform post-mortems under the watchful eye of their enthusiastic head of department, Professor Donaldson, a man who's never short of a new initiative or NHS directive to implement. Also keeping the mortuary alive are hard-drinking lab assistant Gordon, no-nonsense secretary Chloe, and ineffectual police sergeant Simon, who unfortunately gets queasy around corpses.

Throughout these three series, the team tackle a 'live' radio autopsy, a dearth of dead bodies, and a health scare in the lab; find themselves forced to work on Christmas Day due to a department store drama, and witness a retirement, a leaving party, an overdue baby - and a death...

Scripted by Laurence Howarth, one of the lead writers on Dead Ringers and co-star of Radio 4's Laurence & Gus, this delightfully dark comedy is like Silent Witness, only slightly less ridiculous. It stars Peter Davison as Anthony, Tracy-Ann Oberman and Matilda Ziegler as Ruth and Geoffrey Whitehead as Professor Donaldson, with Tom Price as Gordon, Marianne Levy as Chloe and Gus Brown as Simon.

First released: Friday 24th September 2021