With London under lockdown, the medics kept calm and carried on

The english are supposed to be international masters of understatement, but the prize for offhand irony in the face of death went to a laidback French teenager called Victor.

The 16-year-old from Brittany, on the last day of a school trip, was run down on Westminster Bridge in March’s terrorist attack. his bones were splintered and one lung had collapsed.

We watched a magnificent team of medics battle to save his life in the gripping documentary Hospital (BBC2). Now Victor just wanted to go home. ‘ This trip is starting to get tiring,’ he said.

In an outstanding report from St Mary’s hospital, Paddington, cameras captured the moment when the senior doctors and managers learned that a ‘ major incident’ had taken place outside the houses of Parliament.

They were in a routine meeting to assess how many beds were free, when someone’s phone started to jangle. All eyes around the table glanced at the culprit in reproof — and then every other device in the room simultaneously went ping, bleep, warble and squeak.

Protocols were in place. All the staff had rehearsed what to do. The head of admin had a 194-page book of guidelines that covered every eventuality. But it’s one thing to know the theory, quite another to apply it in real life, under massive pressure.

The intense focus of the surgeons was remarkable to watch. They radiated calm and allowed no one the dangerous luxury of emotional reactions. One department head admitted she would probably fall to pieces when she got home, but histrionics were not permitted in the operating theatre.

That professional ethos affected the film- makers, too. hospital documentaries usually follow a format that includes mawkishness and blips of humour. But for the first half-hour, we got nothing but straightforward observation.

This reached a peak when armed counter-terrorist police secured the building and told the TV crew to stop filming. The camera operators pretended to comply, but kept the videotape rolling while they pointed the lenses at the floor.

All we could see were boots and the tips of sub-machine guns. No image could illustrate more clearly the ominous reality of London under lockdown.

The second half had a more conventional structure, focusing on three survivors — including newlywed Stephen, who had celebrated his 40th birthday with wife Cara by swimming with sharks at London Aquarium.

They left to call a cab and, by sheer bad luck, were on the bridge at the wrong moment. Stephen was fortunate not to lose a leg, but the most touching aspect was the couple’s sheer gratitude that they could continue their lives together. Nothing else really mattered.

All the tribulations of a budget superstore seemed insignificant by comparison, in Trouble At Poundland (ITV). There were pallets loaded with more than a million unsold candles in the warehouse, yet the shelves were looking understocked — oh dear, never mind, civilisation will probably survive.

With profits slipping, the voiceover was keen to blame Brexit for the rising cost of european imports.

But if the producers had bothered to think, instead of searching constantly for daft soundbites from shoppers, they might have realised that Poundland is an early indicator of how quitting the EU can boost our national economy.

Buyers at head office were turning to British manufacturers for cheaper chocolates and toilet rolls — which means fewer euro imports and more UK jobs. Isn’t that the whole idea?