Nowhere is American supremacy more evident - well, apart from in economic and military geopolitics - than in TV medical dramas. They have ER, we have The Royal. They have action so fast that their actor medics have to say “GSW” instead of “gunshot wound”, saving themselves no time at all, but boy does it sound impressive. Their dramas have gunshot wounds, for God's sake, whereas our excitement comes from plots where Dad misfires a staple gun during some Easter DIY.
Last night's TV looked set for another humiliating rout. Representing America was the series openers of two titans of medical dramas, Grey's Anatomy and House (Five), both slick, expensive, glamorous. In the British corner, well, we weren't even putting up the low-budget, lowambition graveyard of resting actors, Holby City. Our contender was Holby Blue (BBC One), a Holby City spin-off. It was like asking a bored patient if they wanted some top- dollar personal attention from a Hollywood star in a nurse's outfit, or a long wait in an NHS corridor next to the vending machine.
But then the competition began. House was up first, and, slowly, my mood of resigned dignity turned to flickers of hope. Was there a chance, just a chance, that the ruling champions were injured, off their game? House, starring Hugh Laurie was - I can't put this any other way - a bit boring. There is some interest in watching Laurie, as Dr House, perfect his American accent, and the character he plays, the genius misanthrope tolerated by the hospital because he's just so darn good at diagnosing illnesses, is scabrous enough to be diverting. But - that's it. This remains a one-man show, which Laurie is unfairly asked to carry without the support of a plot.
Apparently, Dr House needs a team. Why do we know this? Because, over the course of an hour, the same woman came into his office at least seven times, saying: “You need a team.” Dr House often told her “I don't need a team”, but by the end, long after I had shouted at the screen just to give him a damn team, he admitted he needed a team. Then he diagnosed a patient's illness. This was an audacious strategy for what ought to have been a showstopper of a series opener.
Grey's Anatomy was suffering from something pretty bad, too. It was dying of an excess of plot. “Time waits for no one” intoned a solemn narrator at the beginning, and certainly not the viewer. There was no concession to people who, since the last series, needed to catch up on exactly who among this dozen-strong scrum of randy doctors, was sleeping with whom. Instead we launched into enough sensational storylines for a lifetime of B-movies.
A surgeon's fiance died and she spent the episode in shock, refusing to get off the floor. The hospital chief was presented with an ultimatum by his wife, who was leaving him. A dying baby was abandoned, and four teenage girls kept a code of silence about who the mother was. Oh yes, and the hospital was hit by a killer plague. Yes, the plague. In this dizzying whirl, the only thing that kept me from nausea was fixing my eyes on the extraordinarily long face of the actress Sandra Oh.
Taken together, these shows were a masterclass in how not to make a medical drama. Enter, nervously, because no one expected it still to be a contender, Holby Blue. Strictly speaking, this is a police drama, linked to the hospital show Holby City, where some of the storylines and actors overlap, so, for example, most of the action was dominated by the plight of Jac, a doctor accused of murdering a man in Holby City's hospital corridor, now banged up in Holby Blue's cells.
It obviously did not have a team of overpaid Hollywood writers workshopping ideas over wheatgrass shots. But it did have Tony Jordan, elder statesman of British TV, from EastEnders to Life on Mars. And he showed the Yanks what money can't buy: pace. Sure, it had moments as clumsy, absurd and predictable as you'd expect to find on prime-time BBC One. But compared with House and Grey's Anatomy, it rocked along nicely, with moments of light and dark in the right place, the characters perfectly introduced and just the right amount of intrigue seeded. Compared with the American shows, it was amateurish, unsophisticated and old-fashioned. But that never stopped us being good, at least once in a while.
Out of the Box
Oprah Winfrey is cracking British reserve, one man at a time. Perhaps it's not such a stretch to find that our rapidly aging cheeky chappie Jamie Oliver stars as a judge in her new charity show The Big Give, as what the producer called “the adorable” one. But news this week was harder to stomach: Simon Cowell was so overwhelmed by the hormones in the Oprah studio that he - to an audience of millions - paid off the mortgage of a family with a sick child.
I had occasionally wondered when we were going to know that the feminist revolution had ended. I was answered last night, with a sighting of an advert for New Whiskers cat food. Incredibly, radically, uniquely, the human adult giving the mog his chow was... a male. A man in a cat food advert? That's it sisters, you can all go home now.
Grey's Anatomy; House; Holby Blue
Last Night's TV
Helen Rumbelow
Nowhere is American supremacy more evident - well, apart from in economic and military geopolitics - than in TV medical dramas. They have ER, we have The Royal. They have action so fast that their actor medics have to say “GSW” instead of “gunshot wound”, saving themselves no time at all, but boy does it sound impressive. Their dramas have gunshot wounds, for God's sake, whereas our excitement comes from plots where Dad misfires a staple gun during some Easter DIY.
Last night's TV looked set for another humiliating rout. Representing America was the series openers of two titans of medical dramas, Grey's Anatomy and House (Five), both slick, expensive, glamorous. In the British corner, well, we weren't even putting up the low-budget, lowambition graveyard of resting actors, Holby City. Our contender was Holby Blue (BBC One), a Holby City spin-off. It was like asking a bored patient if they wanted some top- dollar personal attention from a Hollywood star in a nurse's outfit, or a long wait in an NHS corridor next to the vending machine.
But then the competition began. House was up first, and, slowly, my mood of resigned dignity turned to flickers of hope. Was there a chance, just a chance, that the ruling champions were injured, off their game? House, starring Hugh Laurie was - I can't put this any other way - a bit boring. There is some interest in watching Laurie, as Dr House, perfect his American accent, and the character he plays, the genius misanthrope tolerated by the hospital because he's just so darn good at diagnosing illnesses, is scabrous enough to be diverting. But - that's it. This remains a one-man show, which Laurie is unfairly asked to carry without the support of a plot.
Apparently, Dr House needs a team. Why do we know this? Because, over the course of an hour, the same woman came into his office at least seven times, saying: “You need a team.” Dr House often told her “I don't need a team”, but by the end, long after I had shouted at the screen just to give him a damn team, he admitted he needed a team. Then he diagnosed a patient's illness. This was an audacious strategy for what ought to have been a showstopper of a series opener.
Grey's Anatomy was suffering from something pretty bad, too. It was dying of an excess of plot. “Time waits for no one” intoned a solemn narrator at the beginning, and certainly not the viewer. There was no concession to people who, since the last series, needed to catch up on exactly who among this dozen-strong scrum of randy doctors, was sleeping with whom. Instead we launched into enough sensational storylines for a lifetime of B-movies.
A surgeon's fiance died and she spent the episode in shock, refusing to get off the floor. The hospital chief was presented with an ultimatum by his wife, who was leaving him. A dying baby was abandoned, and four teenage girls kept a code of silence about who the mother was. Oh yes, and the hospital was hit by a killer plague. Yes, the plague. In this dizzying whirl, the only thing that kept me from nausea was fixing my eyes on the extraordinarily long face of the actress Sandra Oh.
Taken together, these shows were a masterclass in how not to make a medical drama. Enter, nervously, because no one expected it still to be a contender, Holby Blue. Strictly speaking, this is a police drama, linked to the hospital show Holby City, where some of the storylines and actors overlap, so, for example, most of the action was dominated by the plight of Jac, a doctor accused of murdering a man in Holby City's hospital corridor, now banged up in Holby Blue's cells.
It obviously did not have a team of overpaid Hollywood writers workshopping ideas over wheatgrass shots. But it did have Tony Jordan, elder statesman of British TV, from EastEnders to Life on Mars. And he showed the Yanks what money can't buy: pace. Sure, it had moments as clumsy, absurd and predictable as you'd expect to find on prime-time BBC One. But compared with House and Grey's Anatomy, it rocked along nicely, with moments of light and dark in the right place, the characters perfectly introduced and just the right amount of intrigue seeded. Compared with the American shows, it was amateurish, unsophisticated and old-fashioned. But that never stopped us being good, at least once in a while.
Out of the Box
Oprah Winfrey is cracking British reserve, one man at a time. Perhaps it's not such a stretch to find that our rapidly aging cheeky chappie Jamie Oliver stars as a judge in her new charity show The Big Give, as what the producer called “the adorable” one. But news this week was harder to stomach: Simon Cowell was so overwhelmed by the hormones in the Oprah studio that he - to an audience of millions - paid off the mortgage of a family with a sick child.
I had occasionally wondered when we were going to know that the feminist revolution had ended. I was answered last night, with a sighting of an advert for New Whiskers cat food. Incredibly, radically, uniquely, the human adult giving the mog his chow was... a male. A man in a cat food advert? That's it sisters, you can all go home now.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article3592639.ece