Drama that always makes you cry like a baby
Rabbie Burns probably didn’t have childbirth in mind when he posited that the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Yet 233 years on, his words still apply. Expectant couples draw up dream scenarios involving scented candles, mood lighting, massage oils, New Age crystals and personalised music playlists. Rarely does it work that way. As midwife Harriet said in One Born Every
Minute (Channel 4): “A birth is an unmanageable beast.”
So it proved as the maternity ward documentary began its 10th series with an episode titled, you guessed it,
Best Laid Plans. This run has relocated to Birmingham Women’s Hospital where, as ever, we followed three couples from arrival to, hopefully, happy departure.
Having survived childhood leukaemia, Samantha struggled for years to conceive. She and husband Tony movingly recalled losing their first child during a premature birth. Now they were having their third baby, but with Samantha’s complex medical history, it wasn’t without challenges. After their son Arthur emerged, Samantha rapidly lost three litres of blood. The emergency button was pressed. Her mother Evelyn retreated to the corner to pray. Tony was left holding the baby as Samantha was rushed into surgery. Despite the scare, both mother and baby turned out fine.
Down the corridor, things weren’t going according to schedule either. Rav and Sharon’s baby daughter Reeva arrived so fast that Sharon’s sister – who had the role of birthing partner – didn’t make it in time and missed all the action.
Finally, Rhiana and Lee were expecting their second son and aiming for another textbook water birth. However, Rhiana came in with leaking waters (“I keep finking I’m weeing meself,” she explained guilelessly) and had to improvise. “Oh babs, I’m really scared,” she whispered, before pushing out baby Bailee like a trooper.
These fly-on-the-wall procedurals have become mainstays of Channel 4’s schedules. “OBEM”, as it’s known, is the original and best, winning Baftas and attracting the highest ratings. All life is here: admirable midwives; helpless dads-to-be; magnificent mothers, gasping on gas-and-air and emitting harrowing howls as they bring new life into the world; and of course, the babies, blinking in the light and bleating as their lungs fill with outside air for the first time.
It might stick to a rigid template, but such human drama enabled One Born
Every Minute to transcend its formula. Three times per episode, you’ll find something in your eye. You weren’t reckoning on blubbing, but what was that about best-laid plans?
Ooh! Aah! Ouch, a rogue spark! Lucy Worsley’s Fireworks for a Tudor Queen (BBC Four) was enough to give a Health & Safety officer nightmares. This lively film followed an ambitious project to recreate one of Britain’s earliest, most spectacular firework displays. With home-made gunpowder and accidental ignitions, it’s a wonder no one departed in a horse-drawn ambulance.
The extravagant event, costing an equivalent of £24m, was originally laid on at Kenilworth Castle in 1575 by Robert Dudley, first Earl of Leicester, in a bid to win Elizabeth I’s hand in marriage. It didn’t work, obviously, hence her still being the Virgin Queen.
More than four centuries later, historian Worsley teamed up with materials scientist Zoe Laughlin to re-enact this high-profile proposal. All unruly hair and eccentric enthusiasm, Laughlin used ye olde instruction manuals to construct firework fountains and a flame-belching dragon.
While Worsley wore chic coats to stride between historical London locations – the Tower of London, the Globe Theatre, St Paul’s – Laughlin beavered away in workshops. They both got a tenuous foreign jolly, though. Worsley travelled to Italy for a lesson in “girandola” (horizontal Catherine wheels), while Laughlin headed further afield to hear how rockets featured on Korean battlefields.
Despite an ill-timed rainstorm that threatened to turn the big crescendo into a damp squib, the pyrotechnics went with an impressive bang. Festivities included feasting and dancing, but they decided against bear-baiting. Political correctness gone mad. Worsley got to raid the dressing-up box as per usual.
This was perky history with an explosive finale, but overlong at 90 minutes and felt padded-out with superfluous background research. Besides, why air it now and not in eight months to coincide with 5 November? Remember, remember that next time, BBC schedulers.
One Born Every Minute ★★★ Lucy Worsley’s Fireworks for a Tudor Queen ★★★