In sickness and in health, you’ll be rooting for the patients at Tooting
The marvel of 24 Hours In A&E (C4) is how it takes desperately sad stories and somehow offers comfort from them. Amid the grief, pain and panic, a stronger emotion shines through: love.
Both main case studies, as the show returned for its 15th series in seven years, were heartbreakers. By rights, we should have gone to bed drained and depressed, yet this fly-on-the-ward documentary — filmed at St George’s hospital, Tooting — overcomes grief by concentrating on the indomitable human spirit.
Octogenarian eve seemed able to smile through anything. husband John found her with a badly broken leg and dislocated ankle after she fell down some steps at their bungalow. It looked as if she could lose her foot but eve was more worried about what would happen to the basket of washing she had dropped.
John was all easy reassurance: ‘I’ll take it to the charity shop,’ he joked. You have to admire a couple who can share a chuckle in the teeth of such trouble. No wonder their marriage has lasted 63 years.
The producers are expert at teasing out the patients’ life stories, with interviews in their homes after the crisis is over. John and eve met in a different world, at Covent Garden during the early Fifties, when he was a barrow-boy and she worked at the telephone exchange. ‘She was the best-looking of the lot,’ he says. ‘She thought I was a spiv!’
Married life hadn’t been easy: one daughter died from an eating disorder, the other from alcohol abuse. But they stuck steadfastly to one rule, never to go to bed on an argument — ‘ always say, “Goodnight, love you,” and a kiss.’
Married life for Maria and Duncan, a childless couple in their early 50s, had perhaps been tougher still. Maria was bedbound with multiple sclerosis, unable to move her limbs. She was rushed to St George’s after a bout of sepsis left her unable to speak, drifting in and out of consciousness.
What was most touching was how Duncan still saw the woman he’d fallen in love with. ‘I was attracted to Maria from the start,’ he said. ‘ She’s Portuguese, so . . . all the things that come with being Latin and hot-blooded!’
It was plain that, 30 years after they met, he couldn’t quite believe he’d won her.
Maria died at home in her sleep, a few weeks after the episode was filmed. But the impression that lingered at the end of the hour was not one of loss but of love.
From a show of simple profundities to one of extreme shallowness, Ultimate Worrier (Dave channel) is stand-up comedian Jon Richardson’s attempt to spin a panel game out of life’s little niggles.
Guests Suzi Ruffell and Josh Widdicombe joined him to fuss over trivial anxieties: how do cats cope with being bullied by bigger pets, is it possible to own too many underpants, and can creepy toys bought on holiday really be possessed by evil spirits?
Panel shows about nonsense work best when there’s an element of competition, and that is lacking here. Jon encouraged his guests to rank their worries as red, amber or soothing green – but really, who cares?
The one segment that concerned me was about dishwashers. Jon claimed he frets when plates and cutlery are loaded incorrectly.
But he urged viewers to arrange the knives and forks with their points upwards. That’s lethal — if you slip while the dishwasher door is open, you’ll end up like a pincushion. Now there’s a real worry.