Boring title, but an intriguing story
I’m sure when Hollywood wanted to launch another medical series, they slipped over to Whyhope to view Dr Hugh Knight in action.
Dr Knight in Doctor, Doctor (TV One, Wednesdays) is a loveable rogue with huge personality flaws and fine skills. He also has a great bedside manner, which has little to do with hospitals.
Surprise, surprise. Dr Conrad Hawkins from The Resident (TV2, Mondays) is passionate, arrogant and Machiavellian and likes his partners standing up rather than lying down. He’s charming, unconventional and a nightmare for any new doctor who’s been assigned to him.
Dr Devon Pravesh, an innocent idealist, arrives at Chastain Park Memorial Hospital in Atlanta and expects to be treated with kid gloves. Hawkins has knuckle dusters. When viewing The Resident, I remembered a brilliant quote from The Chase. The bowl of soup that Mark Labbett (Beastie Boy) slurps has a deep end. That’s where Dr Pravesh was thrown.
On his rounds he meets the dangerously incompetent Dr Randolph Bell and gorgeous nurse practitioner Nicolette Nevin and a whole host of characters that could only be conceived on a psychiatrist’s couch.
Somehow The Resident succeeds. The storylines are little different from every United States medical drama, but the acting is assured. Matt Czuchry as Conrad adds a touch of Cary Agos, the role he played in The Good Wife, and Bruce Greenwood as Dr Bell has interpreted every member of the Kennedy clan since re-enactments were invented.
Phillip Noyce (Clear And Present Danger) is an experienced director, only the title is boring. The Resident? Come on. I’d call it Clear And Present Doctor.
Bancroft (TV One, Sundays) is clever. Boy, it’s clever. It doesn’t take prisoners. Neither does Detective Superintendent Elizabeth Bancroft. She’s determined to bring a local gang to justice, but she has a dark past. So dark it’s like the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.
She inherits Detective Sergeant Katherine Stevens, who’s been sidelined with cold cases. One of them is the unsolved murder of Laura Fraser. Now Bancroft, as an innocent, fresh policewoman, investigated the case 27 years earlier.
She was close to it – so close she may have committed it, so she wants it not just cold, but frozen. Stevens, instead, has raised the temperature and warmed the case in the microwave. She doesn’t realise how scary her life will become.
In Bancroft, two stories – Laura Fraser and gang violence – are merging into one. In typical ITV style, the series doesn’t make it easy to watch. There are flashbacks within flashbacks and the episode teases the viewer. You either like that or you don’t.
Sarah Parish (Bancroft) adopts a face that could be hewn from Ayers Rock. She treats evil in a different way to us, but you know she’s as ruthless as the gang leaders she’s pursuing. The intrigue in tomorrow’s episode is whether she’ll be found out or if Stevens ends up in the microwave instead. I’m guessing she’ll be fish fingers at 180 degrees.
The Hotel Inspector (TV One, tonight) is so much more enjoyable when Alex Polizzi, discovers a rustic version of Basil Fawlty mismanaging a country pub somewhere. Bucolic Basils are highly entertaining.
Instead, we had George Orwell’s 1984 in a single bedroom without blackout curtains. Distressed Donna works 120 hours a week as general manager of the Blue Room, near Birmingham, while Caroline, her boss, is omnipresent. She watches the hotel 24/7 from a computer in France and emails instructions 20 times a day.
It’s a challenging fix for Alex. Get some structure into Donna’s working life, reduce costs, ‘‘budget’’ the Blue Room, trim the menu and sort Caroline out before Big Brother gets to her. Audacious Alex does the lot. Now, go and find Basil.
Current affairs are about people and TV One’s Sunday scored a coup when Lorraine Downes agreed to an interview. It was controlled and restrained, almost as if it was scripted.
However, she blossomed when talking about her life with Martin Crowe. ‘‘I found my soulmate,’’ she said. ‘‘But my heart was broken when he left.’’
Now, she’s chosen to find joy again. We wish her well.