A nailbiting day with the married medics who share an ambulance
Just when you think
Ambulance (BBC1) has settled into a predictable pattern, contrasting patients with life-threatening injuries and those who just need a little gentle coaxing, the show delivers a jawdropping twist.
the fourth series returned to follow Manchester’s North West Ambulance service, gearing up for one of the busiest weekends of the year with the Parklife music festival.
Our embattled NHs was about to be overloaded with more than 70,000 emergency calls from pleasure-seeking idiots who had swallowed unknown, illegal substances and then wondered why they were feeling poorly.
the first call-out of the episode was a grim one in every way. senior paramedic Gari answered an urgent plea from a woman whose elderly husband had collapsed on the toilet.
At first it seemed Jim had suffered ‘a workable arrest’ — 999 jargon for a heart attack that might not prove fatal, with luck. But nothing worked, and his widow faced a painful decision: keep fighting to bring him round, knowing he would have serious brain damage, or let him slip away.
she chose the hardest but most loving way, and said goodbye. Filming in these raw conditions must be next to impossible. We forget that the camera crews have to be in the room. staying out of everyone’s way, while securing the patients’ trust, surely requires skills as complex as those of the paramedics themselves.
And then, following the well-tried Ambulance format, we had a bit of fun, as response team Glynn and Andrea called to give 95-year-old Marion a hand. she’d fallen off the sofa and, though she hadn’t hurt herself, couldn’t get up. Worse, she couldn’t reach her fags.
Marion was a smasher. Flirting furiously, she admired Glynn’s tattoos — she fancied having one of her own, perhaps a rose, but didn’t dare . . . ‘with a bum like mine?’
Glynn and Andrea spent most of the afternoon trying to persuade another spirited old girl, Pat, that she needed to go to hospital.
Pat was having none of it: she’d rather die in her own bed, she declared. the two paramedics looked emotionally wrung out by the time they left.
And here came the shocker. Glynn remarked that he needed a cuppa. Andrea retorted that she’d put the kettle on for him, but she was having something stronger, thank you very much. they began planning their evening . . . together. Our ambulance duo were married. they were parawedded.
the puerile show-offs in Gordon, Gino And Fred: Road Trip (ITV) aren’t an item, but only because they could never love each other more than each man already adores himself.
Much was made of an ‘accidental’ trip to a nudist beach, with Gino cavorting naked and demanding group hugs. that night, he and Gordon were apparently sharing a bed in the campervan — for comic effect, like Morecambe and Wise. But Eric and Ernie would have quit comedy and become binmen, rather than do a joke as cheap, crude and tasteless as the one that closed the scene.
And that’s the problem with this dire show. Gordon and his faux mates obviously think they’re funny. they really aren’t.
their gags are so scripted and repetitive it becomes painful. their timing is abysmal, and the laughs wouldn’t stand a chance even if the material was funny in the first place — which it certainly isn’t.
these men have surrounded themselves with underlings who dare not point out what utter tripe it all is. this isn’t a road trip, it’s an ego trip.