Hospital
BBC TWO, 9.00PM
A welcome second run for this fly-onthe-wall series whose immediacy and complexity – going beyond the front line to probe managerial decisions and the effects of immigration – added yet more layers of interest to the absorbing world of the hospital. Back in the spring, cameras returned to the five hospitals in the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust for this four-part documentary, and they captured the response to the Westminster terror attack on March 22, as is shown in this opener.
As St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington is the nearest major trauma centre to the incident, a Major Incident Protocol is invoked and the hospital is put in lockdown, while some critically ill patients are transferred to nearby Charing Cross to prepare for the influx of casualties. Among the first to arrive are two French teenagers on a school trip and a British man, needing immediate surgery to save his leg, and his wife. “We’re just an ordinary couple,” he says. “This will change us.” After an election in which the future of the NHS was debated, we can only hope that the humbling professionalism of its staff and the lifesaving treatment that they offer, as documented here, won’t soon be a distant memory. Gabriel Tate residents reaching crisis point as Roz (Paula Malcomson) faces a reckoning, PC Powell (Mark Stanley) wrestles with his conscience and Father Michael (Sean Bean) is seemingly forced to hold the community together alone.