Cause of Death: The Coroner’s Office | Preview (Channel 5)

Filmed over six months with unprecedented access, the series follows Dr Adeley and his team as they uncover the truth behind a series of cases, provide comfort to the next of kin and guide them through an unfamiliar process, coordinate medical enquiries, post mortems and CT scans, and liaise with the police leading up to the inquest.

We are alongside pathologists as they perform post mortems, with mortuary staff and radiologists as they perform and analyse post mortem CT scans.

And we are with the next of kin as they come to terms with the deaths of their loved ones, and find out the questions they need answers to. With unprecedented access from start to finish, using audio reconstructed from the original transcripts from behind the closed doors of inquests for the first time.

Cause of Death: The Coroner’s Office provides a unique insight into the coronal process. In the early hours of the morning, two elderly men are found semi-conscious with head injuries in the middle of a darkened stretch of road in Leyland, Lancashire.

Police escalate their transfer to Preston Royal Hospital, but tragically one of the men’s condition worsens and he dies. The surviving man has no memory of events. The coroner must now establish what happened that night, and determine the cause of death.

On a cold midwinter morning, a man is found under-dressed and unresponsive in a pub garden in late January, and later dies at Preston Royal Hospital. He has no phone and no wallet on him.

It’s unusual to have an unidentified person in the mortuary. Following days of enquiries, the police finally have to issue a press release appealing for anyone to come forward. A family responds, and in an extraordinary scene the audience sees the moment they find out if the man is indeed their relative.

The coroner’s team now has a final mystery to solve: how did he die?

The Coroner's Office begins Monday 17th October on Channel 5.