Animal magic revisited
FOR six years we’ve watched in awe as Professor Noel Fitzpatrick has pieced broken animals back together in THE SUPERVET: NOEL FITZPATRICK (Channel 4, 8pm) using all kinds of space-age medical gadgetry.What’s even more amazing is that Noel’s invented a lot of the procedures and contraptions himself. He really is a pioneer in animal care.
But behind all Noel’s technical wizardry is his heart-warming modus operandi of restoring pets to health and to the people who love them, which always makes this series a four-hankie weepy.
Tonight’s show catches up with more of Noel’s most challenging cases to show us what happened next. We meet Chihuahua Darcy again, who in 2015 suffered a crushed pelvis after being hit by a car.The most distressing part of the story is that Darcy wasn’t just a pet but a lifeline for her 18-year-old autistic owner TaJournée, who said at the time: “Without her, I feel like an alien.”
Noel had to reconstruct Darcy’s tiny pelvis using pins, nuts and bolts, then hold them together with an external frame.At the time Neil said it was “like moving around pieces of glass with chopsticks,” so it was entirely possible that even Neil would be unable to work his magic in this case.
So it’s a delight to return five years on to see Darcy fully healed and still providing TaJournée with the friendship she relies on.
And there’s another rewarding revisit to the home of Ruth and Chris, whose adored three-legged cat Jersey – already an amputee – was suffering from osteoarthritis in his hip.
At the time Noel confessed he’d never heard of a hip replacement in a three-legged cat and that, furthermore, if it went wrong, Jersey would have to be put down.
Of course, Noel should never have doubted himself – he aced the operation.
The police’s killing of George Floyd in America in May was so shocking it sparked protests around the world. Here, it got the conversation going again about the problem of racism in Britain.
STEPHEN LAWRENCE: HAS BRITAIN CHANGED? (ITV
8pm) is a live debate hosted by
Rageh Omaar and Anushka Asthana about what strides have been made since the damning public inquiry into Stephen’s 1993 murder labelled the police’s response to his killing ‘institutionally racist’.
It’s been almost three decades since Stephen’s death and so the question is, what’s changed?
After the uproar earlier this month over the Met police’s decision to stop and search black British sprinter Bianca Williams and her partner, Portuguese athlete Ricardo dos Santos, as they drove through London, it’s even more of a hot-button topic and a debate worth having.