Vets face it all: tears, love, pain . . . and a flash of nurse’s lacy socks
Miracles don’t come with guarantees. One of the most admirable aspects of longrunning animal hospital documentary The Supervet (c4) is its honesty.
even the surgical marvels devised by Professor Noel Fitzpatrick can’t always solve everything. None of the case studies in this latest episode, from a show now in its tenth series, proved a total success.
Maya, the two-year- old mastiff with a tumour in her leg, had an amazing Meccano-style joint fitted to replaced the diseased bone. Noel called it ‘ an adjustable modular endo-prosthesis’. i’d call it an artificial knee, but then i wasn’t the genius who invented it.
The grim truth was that even this bionic bone graft could not eradicate the cancer cells that were almost certainly dispersed through Maya’s body. ‘Have as much fun with her now while you can,’ Noel told the owner’s daughter gently.
For Kanzi, the rhodesian ridgeback with lame back legs, he built metal grommets to reinforce her spine. But the operation carried inevitable risks and after some soul-searching he advised Kanzi’s owners to treat her condition with painkillers: better a dog with a limp than one paralysed by freak bad luck on the operating table.
The third patient was an incontinent pug called Betty Boop, who needed an operation to relieve water on the spine. surgery would help, said the vet, but a full recovery was impossible.
it was a brave decision by the producers to lump these three stories together. They could have been spread out, as a sprinkling of sadness across weeks of happier tales. But, collectively, they reminded us that our pets will inevitably bring us pain and tears as well as barrowloads of love.
Not that it was all dark clouds. This show excels at the lighter side of the vet’s day, whether that’s the nurse showing off her lacy socks to a bored bulldog or the students embroiled in a heated discussion about Betty Boop the pug: is the ‘p’ silent in Boop, they wondered.
Noel handed the pug op to his colleague, neurosurgeon colin, who stands 6ft 5in and possesses (according to Betty Boop’s owner) ‘a pound of sausages on each hand as fingers’.
colin repaired the little dog’s spine with a patch made from pork intestine. ‘Pig and pug united for ever,’ he said cheerfully. When the surgery was over, Betty returned to the home she shares with 16 rescued chihuahuas. The sight of them all out for walkies, taking it in turns to ride in a pink pushchair, couldn’t fail to put a smile on any dog-lover’s face.
There were fewer smiles with the return of the fantasy sitcom Zapped (Dave channel), billed as an ‘original comedy’. all the jokes in this formulaic farce have been done decades ago and much better by the late sir Terry Pratchett in his Discworld novels.
Mind you, sir Terry’s imagination was so fecund that he didn’t leave much space for his successors.
James Buckley plays an inept office worker who ends up in a world of swords and sorcery, under the drunken protection of a useless wizard (Paul Kaye). Beset by fake soothsayers, devious politicians and thuggish city guards, he’s dismayed to discover that even the magic doesn’t work properly.
Fantasy sitcom has been done brilliantly by the liveaction puppet series Yonderland, over on sky. Zapped simply feels derivative.
On the other hand, it does feature doltish coppers with dainty wings called Fairies and wizards with Jethro Tull beards. That’s got to be worth a titter. Just don’t expect too many laughs and you won’t be disappointed.