‘Let’s have the titles, shall we?” trills Miriam Margolyes as she prepares to embark on a celebrity “journey” into the history of the NHS. But in Matron, Medicine and Me: 70 Years of the NHS (BBC1), producers hit a seam of pure gold with the septuagenarian actress. Stripped over the week to coincide with the health service’s anniversary, five moderately well-known people with connections to the NHS are going behind the cubicle curtain to learn more about the everyday heroes we take for granted and the beginnings of free healthcare provision in the UK: a precious thing which seems increasingly under threat.
Margolyes sets off for Scotland to visit her father’s old stomping ground when he started out as a GP in the 1940s, before the sainted institution was launched. Travelling around Glasgow and the surrounding countryside, she clasps hands and shows genuine interest in people with small stories to tell. An archive film shows the launch of the NHS and Margolyes has a cup of tea with some older residents who remember paying to visit the doctor before it came. “It’s so important,” she says to her fellow “oldies” sitting around, politely ignoring the biscuits, “that people know there was a time before the NHS. It makes them appreciate it more.”
At a difficult time for doctors and patients in a service sliced and stretched by government cuts, the unalloyed gratitude of everyone concerned has all the more poignancy. She listens intently as a patient at one practice tells her about his wife’s breast cancer treatment and how he could never have afforded it. Tears bulge from her eyes and she rubs them away.
Another man tells a now chuckling Margolyes that he was one of twins, born just before the introduction of the health service. The doctor was paid half a crown to attend the birth, but after his twin sister arrived, out he popped as a surprise and his poor mother didn’t have another half crown to pay. “I was born on tick,” he grins.
Margolyes’ lovely, doughy face crumples as she sums up her visit to Scotland. She is undoubtedly moved by the dedication of the staff and the appreciation shown by the patients. If we must have this constant stream of famous types on a “journey” accompanied by touching piano music, then let it always be Margolyes. Her interviews are intercut with disarming reminiscences of her own dad. Sitting at a cafe table clutching a picture of the old man in his prime, she admits her relationship with him was never what she would have liked it to be. She recalls how disappointed he was to find out she was gay and how she regrets his reaction to the news. It changed things between them. She pauses.
“Goodness me, that was emotional. It’s all getting rather Who Do You Think You Are? around here,” she says, snatching the sodden tissue from your hand and insisting you buck up. You don’t expect a documentary series broadcast just after breakfast news on a weekday morning to play with form or even try that hard to hold your attention but this episode is cut through with the trademark mischief of its presenter.
In one sequence she visits the Scottish air ambulance team and stands next to the fine yellow flying beast as she quizzes its pilot on how the service got started. Then we cut to her, helmet squashing her ebullient grey curls down around her eyes, climbing into the co-pilot seat, ready for take-off. The Airwolf theme tune accompanies footage of the banana-coloured chopper swooping off into the blue. “This is the part of the programme where the celebrity, in this case me, gets in the chopper and goes for an all-action test drive across the Scottish landscape,” she grins.
Beautiful dark green forests and silver lochs rush past as we get a Miriam’s eye view of the scenery below. Breathless, she says in voiceover, “Isn’t it wonderful? You get the feeling of just being so free out here”. Record scratch: we cut back to a beaming Miriam, still on the ground, admitting she’s terrified of helicopters and that there’s no way she’s getting inside. It’s a small thing but the veritable mid-air heel-clicking fun of it all had me skipping along next to her, hanging on every word.
It feels like television has brought its games in on the last day of term whenever she’s around. Her eye-popping turns on Graham Norton’s sofa, shocking the bejeesus out of a gobstruck Will.I.Am with her x-rated stories, are unforgettable. And she alone made BBC2’s The Real Marigold Hotel essential viewing earlier this year as she sampled communal retirement on the Indian continent. More Miriam, please.
