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| TV,
Jerry Carpenter,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F4
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And so the world’s most expensive TV series rolls into its sixth series on Channel 4. Prime draw gorgeous George Clooney is gone, leaving for good his paediatrician role for a full time movie career. But the rest of the angst-ridded overworked staff are still hanging in there.
The show kicks off in typical medical drama style – pregnant head nurse Carol Hathaway meets a series of irritating characters on her way to the coffee shop, who are all seriously injured/killed when a runaway van knocks the whole lot of them for nine-pins. We then get to track the intubation and stomach insertion adventures of this lot as our cast regulars get to work on them. This kind of plot device is something ER rarely does, it’s a drama which concentrates on the surgeons not the patients, unlike our own ‘Casualty’, where the opening 20 minutes has become a guess-what-horrific-accident-happens-next sport.
The patients slowly fade from focus as the show begins drawing it’s plot strands out, many carried over from the last season. Super surgeon Benton is still fighting a custody battle for his deaf son, HIV infected nurse Jeannie has to deal with a potentially HIV infected baby while chewing over marriage proposals from her man. The majority of the episode concerns the power struggles within the department as Kerry ‘mean but human’ Weaver betrays Doc ‘nice, too human’ Greene over the promotion of ‘mean and inhuman’ Doc Romano to chief of staff.
There’s a couple of new faces, superfit jogging doc Cleo Finch who’s obviously there to rub a few people the wrong way, and a rather shameless Clooney-a-like Dr Luka Kovac, who’s not only good with kids but also already has Carol coming over all moony eyed.
It’s one of those episodes that juggles the plots strands effortlessly, the humour and the pathos are blended subtly together so that you don’t get that ‘meanwhile-back-to-the-funny-story’ jarring effect which cocks up many other multi-plot shows. It’s also nice to catch an episode of a hospital drama that doesn’t chuck too much medical moral dilemma at you, although you know that sort of thing is always lurking round the corner with a bucket of sentimental piano motifs. But for now it’s exciting and sharp and makes the likes of ‘Holby City’ look overplayed and contrived.
Channel 4 Wed 21.00GMT Sky One Thurs 21.30GMT
NBC Thurs 22.00/21.00 ET/PT
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