Never complain? Tragically, it didn’t help this frail old lady . . .

On Monday this column cited Victorian prime minister Benjamin disraeli’s dictum, ‘ never explain,’ as the perfect maxim for TV thrillers.

But that’s only half the quote. The old opportunist also said: ‘never complain.’ But in modern Britain, that’s the worst possible advice. The sad truth is that those who moan the loudest get all the help, as Ambulance (BBC1) starkly proved.

This fast-moving documentary, following paramedic crews through a tense and hectic night shift on an icy december night in Birmingham, started with a 999 call from an anxious woman whose mum had fallen out of bed. Betty was 89, and unable to get up.

‘I only went into the lounge for a moment,’ the daughter fretted. But she wasn’t trying to make a fuss: Betty didn’t seem to be in pain, and they both knew the emergency services would be rushed off their feet on a Saturday.

She was right about that. a horrendous pile-up at an underpass in the city centre had left six dead and more injured. The carnage was so terrible that, when the first responders arrived, they feared it was the aftermath of a terrorist attack.

This series is peerless at observing the emotions of all in the rescue services. Seasoned veteran James, in charge of the crash scene, used dispassionate jargon — ‘injuries incompatible with life’, ‘confirmed recognition life extinct’.

Gradually, we understood that this was his way of coping, of quelling his own feelings, in order to do his job. novice ambulance driver Tash, just 21, discovered how hard this was: in the aftermath, she sobbed helplessly on the phone to her mother. In fact, Tash coped superbly, and her mum must have been deeply proud watching this.

Meanwhile, Betty was still waiting, quietly and patiently — unlike the foul-mouthed wannabe gangster who called 999 screaming that he’d been shot in the back and was bleeding to death. Crews rushed to his aid.

Howling in pain and terror, the cowardly hoodlum flung abuse at everyone who tried to help him. It turned out he’d been shot not in the back, but the backside. The real shame is there’s no way for the nHS to reclaim the cost of treatment from ungrateful criminals.

and still Betty waited. It was almost seven hours before paramedics arrived, and discovered this decent, uncomplaining old lady was in a much worse way than she would admit.

Cold, confused and exhausted, she had sores on her hands and feet that could indicate septicaemia. In hospital, pneumonia was diagnosed.

Betty died a few months later. Prompt treatment might not have saved her, but she certainly deserved it. She just wasn’t the type to complain.

no complaints about the engrossing series on history’s most influential painters, Great Art (ITV), which this week looked at the father of modernism, Edouard Manet.

Each episode combines a brief biography with a general survey of the artist’s impact and a closer look at three or four masterpieces. The format is old-fashioned and didactic, and not ashamed of it.

Manet’s best-known images, such as the naked woman picnicking in the park with two Parisian dandies, and the fed-up barmaid staring blankly at you across the counter at the Folies Bergere, are unmistakeable — even if most of us might guess they were by Toulouse-Lautrec or some more famous painter. Presenter Tim Marlow explained succinctly why Manet’s name deserves to be remembered and what he did to shape the art movements that followed, while pointing out hidden themes in the pictures. a lovely programme in a series worth recording.