Witness to a Prosecution
Hong Kong TVB TV series or program
Witness to a Prosecution is a Hong Kong television series produced by TVB. The original broadcast was on the TVB Jade network with 45-minute episodes airing five days a week from 20 December 1999 to 16 January 2000. The drama stars Bobby Au-yeung as the famous historical forensic medical expert Song Ci ("Sung Chee" in Cantonese romanisation). Set during the Southern Song Dynasty of Mid-Imperial China, Witness to a Prosecution tells a fictionalised account of Chee's modest beginnings and the events leading to the creation of his book Collected Cases of Injustice Rectified, the world's earliest documentation of forensic science.
Witness to a Prosecution was met with positive reviews and quickly became a popular success. Viewership ratings were consistently high, and the drama was the seventh most-viewed drama in 2000, drawing an average of 33 rating points, peaking at 44 points. The drama also yielded Au-yeung a "Best Actor" win at the 2000 TVB Anniversary Awards. A subsequent sequel was released in 2003, airing on the same channel from 24 February to 23 March 2003. Although viewership ratings peaked higher to 47 points, it was met with mixed reviews.
Synopsis
For 30 years, nighttime keeper Song Ci (Bobby Au-yeung) was despised in To Yuen village due to his posthumous birth in a coffin, having only the sickly scholar Sit Dan (Michael Tse) and the coolie Cha Siu-chaan (Lo Mang) as his friends.
After disputing with the village chief over his family's land, Ci, along with a homeless female thief Tong Sze (Jessica Hsuan), are accused for murdering the chief and are sentenced to death.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8028411. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1999, 2000 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “Witness to a Prosecution” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.