Covid, a tragic hospital death and the bland cruelty of NHS red tape
THe new freedom of access for film-makers to eavesdrop on detectives, nurses, 999 call handlers and paramedics has transformed documentary television. It’s engrossing to watch people doing jobs that matter.
But that freedom comes at a price. Camera crews are allowed in, but it seems either they are not allowed to ask difficult questions or they are afraid to jeopardise their permits by commenting on what they film.
The result is that viewers are too often left frustrated. We are allowed to see what goes on. We cannot always understand the reasons behind it.
Hospital (BBC2) covered the final days of two patients, 87-year- old Joyce, and Jim, 81, at the royal free i n North London. Both contracted Covid-19 on the wards while being treated f or other ailments. Neither survived.
Staff professed t hemselves baffled at how the disease could be spreading. They even hinted the patients could be transferring it among themselves, as if they were slipping out of bed after lights out for illicit card games.
Gradually, it became evident that nurses were not being routinely tested for coronavirus. only those who showed symptoms were belatedly swabbed. others who were infected, but asymptomatic, were still doing their rounds.
It wasn’t the hospital’s fault that they didn’t have enough testing kits. That’s scant comfort to the families of Joyce and Jim, though.
What was truly baffling was the hospital’s i nsistence, during Joyce’s last hours, that only one daughter at a time could sit with her and hold her hand. To have two people at the bedside, even at the end, would breach their ‘infection control protocol’.
This blandly cruel bureaucratese was particularly senseless, since Joyce had been infected with the lethal virus in her hospital bed. No one from the documentary team dared breathe a challenge.
If BBC cameras are allowed to film on condition that awkward questions will not be asked, this un-journalistic pact should be made clear from the outset.
Shows like these are quick to praise the NHS f or working miracles when treatments succeed. When it goes wrong, and a trip to the ward proves deadly, TV has a duty to ask why.
one of the gravest problems caused by Covid- 19 i s that millions of operations have been postponed. for Grand National jockey Bob Champion, a delay like that would probably have been fatal had it occurred when he was t r eated f or testicular cancer in 1979.
His doctor told him that, if he’d left it even another month, he would not have lived. Bob was joining in The Real Full Monty: On Ice ( I TV), per f o r ming a striptease on skates to encourage men to check themselves for any unwanted lumps.
The rest of the line-up were mostly experienced skaters, including Dancing on Ice veterans Perri kiely, Jake Quickenden and Gareth Thomas. Bob was tacked on the end of the line, copying their moves one step late.
as ever with these flashing-forcharity specials, i t was the youngest dancers who professed to be most ashamed of their bodies. The older ones were mostly happy to get it all out for anyone watching, though former topless model Linda Lusardi was unexpectedly coy.
It’s the personal stories, though, that matter most. The X factor singer Jake choked up as he remembered his brother oliver, who died of bone cancer at just 19. ‘He had no life at all,’ Jake said, ‘he didn’t get to do anything.’
amid all the larking, it was a moment of genuine emotion.