Is there really any call for yet another hospital doc? Oh well, here we go anyway: Superhospital (ITV), filmed over a year at the Royal Derby. This one covers the entire hospital from top to basement – or maternity to morgue, if we’re looking at it that way. Starting with the liver ward (nearer the morgue, that way).
One in 10 of all patients at the hospital is there as a result of alcohol (disease, injury; I don’t think it includes those in maternity). In the liver ward the figure is obviously much higher. “If you fall, you fall on the floor and you crack your skull,” senior sister Jayne tells one patient. “And then create lots of paperwork for us.” No one wants that.
Jayne is lovely though. She cares, in all senses of the word. “I know it could happen to anyone, so come on, let me help you,” she says. She even shaves lonely James, although he does, as he says, look a bit like Keith Lemon afterwards. It’s not just about people with damaged livers in ward 304, it’s about people with damaged lives. And James’s needs a lot of fixing.
To the carpark, where parking manager Mel tells her team over the walkie-talkie to make their way back to the office. It can get very busy, we learn, gridlock right back to the main road … and you know what, that really isn’t very interesting. Even the big drama of the morning – a consultant’s Ford Focus has rolled over the barrier in Bay 6A – doesn’t really compare with the life-and-death stories going on inside.
The same goes for the catering department, where supervisor Paul is looking into abandoning the tomato in the cheese and tomato sandwiches. From next week Paul will be going live with a new, cheese-only sandwich … and I honestly couldn’t give a stuff. Hospital food could have been interesting, but Paul and his big tomato conundrum really aren’t making it so.
You can see what they are trying to do: create a portrait of the entire hospital, all departments, all the people who work and come there. And to make it a bit different from 24 Hours in A&E, One Born Every Minute etc. It might have worked if Paul was a real life Gordon Ramsay, but he isn’t. And tomato sandwiches – like parking – are pretty mundane next to broken James and his broken liver.
It’s also mundane next to what’s going on in the chemotherapy suite, where well-heeled women with no hair discuss buying nice stuff for themselves (Mulberry handbags, Porsches) to offset the misery of what they’re going through. And in A&E, where consultant Dan is trying to figure out why 20-year-old Michael is unconscious (turns out it’s because he drank a bottle of home-made Polish vodka). And later trying to restart 65-year-old Eric’s heart, using CPR, the defibrillator, adrenaline shots, everything. Trying – and succeeding! Eric’s not quite ready for the morgue yet. “He was actually quite lucky,” says nice Dan. “For that nine seconds he died.”
Superhospital is utterly compelling again. Because it is about life and death, and amazing doctors and nurses doing amazing things, and people’s lives changing in spectacular ways. It’s also now basically the same as 24 Hours in A&E, and I imagine if and when (there are three more parts to come) we visit maternity, it won’t be so unlike One Born Every Minute. So basically it works when it’s derivative, and is less successful when it tries to be different. Maybe – hopefully – in a future episode we’ll get to visit that morgue. I bet there are some interesting characters in there.
I like dogs. I’m interested in Dogs: Their Secret Lives (Channel 4), the experiments to test their sense of smell, problem solving abilities, etc. I don’t like dogshit though. Well, no one does, do they, apart from Jaydee? Jaydee is a chocolate labrador with a horrible habit: she eats excrement – her own, other dogs’, other animals’ too. She would eat yours, given the chance. Now I can see that for her owner Steve this is a problem that needs sorting; and that for anyone with similar issues it would be useful. That can’t be many people though, can it? For the rest of us it’s just disgusting – the idea, the spectacle of Jaydee chewing away on a turd, everything about it, it’s making me feel ill. I don’t want it on my pavement, in my park, and I don’t want dogshit on my television. Thank you.
