JODIE Whittaker is certainly determined to be a doctor. Not content with being the first female caretaker of the TARDIS, she popped up this week in Trust Me (BBC One, Tuesday, 9pm), resetting fankled ankles and inserting chest drains as if to the NHS born. At this rate do not be surprised to see her sitting across the desk when next you visit the GP.
The Broadchurch star plays Sheffield nurse Cath Hardacre, who in turn plays Dr Alison Sutton, a doctor. Confused? Let me explain. Cath became Ally after getting into trouble at work, having lots of bills to pay, and rescuing her pal Ally’s medical certificates from the bin just before said chum skipped off to New Zealand to start a new life. Before you can say “Hmm, that’s a bit far-fetched even by the standards of loopy psychological thrillers built around attractive yet fragile women”, Cath/Ally is in a fabulous flat in Edinburgh with a job in A&E. But what will happen when she cannot bluff her way out of a crisis?
The whole thing is as daft as performing open heart surgery with a spoon, but what will keep us watching is Whittaker, now a rival to Sarah “Happy Valley” Lancashire as the hottest BBC acting property. Whittaker and Lancashire: now there’s a fight that would end in A&E.
Animal Rescue Live: Supervet Special (Channel 4, Monday to Friday, 8pm), as one could tell from the title, wanted to have that air of emergency, 999, blues and twos about it. Set over a week, presenters Noel Fitzpatrick (aka the Supervet), Kate Quilton and Steve Jones established base camp at the Newcastle Dog and Cat Shelter to plead the case for the many rescue animals around the UK waiting for “forever homes”.
This was a spiffing idea from the Supervet team, though one did worry early on if there was not a whiff of The Generation Game-style conveyor belt about proceedings. But as the presenters stressed regularly, everyone applying to adopt would go through the usual checks first. If anyone could make the case for favouring mixed-breed rescue animals over designer dogs, it’s yer man Noel, and I look forward to a follow-up programme to see how things worked out. To say thanks to Noel for this particular effort, I’ve put in a bid to re-home him. Still waiting for a call-back.
Any animal watching Eden: Paradise Lost (Channel 4, Monday to Friday, 10pm) probably did so through their paws, horrified at the human stupidity on show. Remember the social cum television experiment in which 23 folk were sent to Ardnamurchan to survive in the wilderness for a year? It was meant to spawn regular, Big Brother-style coverage, but walkouts and other problems meant the plug was pulled. Here the reality of what happened on the reality show was revealed, warts, bad behaviour and all. You might have worried about the future of humanity after watching this, but one was left thinking this lot were pillocks before they went in and could only become more so under the pressure of rain, isolation and the living hell of not having a Waitrose at the foot of the road. Horribly compulsive viewing, but also a lot of money for not many hours of telly.
There were happier campers in the new series of Wet Hot American Summer (Netflix). How to describe this comedy about chums who had such a great time when they were at camp that they resolve to meet there again in 10 years’ time? Well, it began as a film in 2001, has a cracking cast that includes obviously non-teens Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler and Elizabeth Banks playing teens, with comedy that calls to mind For Your Consideration and Best in Show, with an extra layer of knowingness. The humour is hit and miss and a familiarity with the American summer camp system is assumed, but it has some laugh-out-loud moments. Worth a try.
Finally, some telly for the grown-ups in Citizen Jane (BBC Four, Wednesday, 10.45pm), especially those who recall how Glasgow was once torn apart by city planners and residents shipped out to deserts wi’ windaes (copyright Billy Connolly). Jane Jacobs fought the good fight against such vandalism in New York in the last century, a tale told in a stylish, powerful film by Matt Tyrnauer. Back then, Jacobs’ opponent was Robert Moses, a city planner who thought he knew best what would benefit local people. Alas, the same mistakes, complete with endless high-rises and motorways through neighbourhoods, are now being repeated as new cities spring up around the globe. Surviving these new urban sprawls could make a year in Ardnamurchan look like a week at Butlin’s. Once again, humankind learns nothing: good for television, sucks for everyone else.
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