Getting On

Comedies without laugh tracks tend to be great or awful. The 8.3 rating suggests that this is one of the greats. However, it just didn't resonate with me. A bunch of hospital personal talking over one another about trivialities didn't bring a smile to my face, let alone a chuckle.

However, the really big issue for me was the camera-work. It reminded me of the person who just got their first camcorder. Instead of taking videos, they wave the camera round like a paint brush on steroids. The cameraman would change the perspective from top-town to a shot looking up between the bed rails at one of the characters.

CONFESSION: I gave up after 10 minutes of the first episode. It probably got better later one because I just can't father the great 8.3 rating.

A friend of mine saw Jo Brand in a nurses uniform at her hospital the other day so I suppose there is another series of this show coming: hence the belated review.

I've never got on with this program. The cold filters and joyless staff make it hard watching and the laughs just aren't there. My main beef however is that in contrary to what almost every review I've read has said, this is one of the most unrealistic portrayals of a hospital I've ever seen. Including Carry On Matron.

While Jo Brand has caught a flavour of the bureaucracy on NHS wards and the tendency to follow protocol over all else, Brand has utterly missed the feel of a ward. The scenes are empty and utterly, utterly quiet.

The main reason for this is that three quarter's of the staff are missing- where are all the other nurses? Where on earth are the junior doctors? No wonder things go wrong on this show, the only medical cover is an (admittedly fairly plausible) consultant and a gaggle of students.

Geriatric patients certainly don't lie mute in their beds. They are often pretty confused and you never quite know what is going to happen. On one memorable day someone pooed in Sister's office... There were no witnesses, so who was the culprit? An afternoon spent comparing the sample to patients' stool charts did not reveal the answer.

That's another point- where is the messing around? Green Wing captured it pretty well.

Perhaps the show is so grim that people assume it is accurate, which is frankly rather worrying. Cheer up viewers! everyday tragedy notwithstanding the average hospital ward is a far more pleasant and funnier place than this.

Is this a "comedy"? It's not really jokes. It's story of strong women working under impossible conditions and against impossible odds. Maybe is the human comedy.

Kim Wilde (Jo Brand) is the lowly nurse who does the work of cleaning up, taking care of endless tasks, and trying to stay sane with a breaking marriage and a job with very little hope. Sister Den Scanlan (her line manager) is the main onduty nurse who is trying to be decent to the people under her care but also navigating difficult personal situations, especially with her own line manager, Hilary Loftus (Ricky Grover). And Dr. Pippa Moore (Vicki Pepperdine) is trying to keep the ward and hospital running by grasping for grants and performing bewildering research projects in hope of getting funding.

The ward is for elderly women, some who are there for their last journey, and some who are there for palliative care in hopes they will be well enough to be transferred to a better long-term care facility.

It's humour found in bathos. Small victories, small failures, some bright moments and perhaps more sad moments.

I loved the show and binge-watched it. I had seen Jo Brand first on "Would I Lie to You," and then when I saw her listed as a cast member in "Damned," I binged watched that. But it was over in 2 seasons. So this series comes up, and I am finding that I love this person who plays these characters: world-weary, gruff, testy, but really there is a person who wants to be kind and wants to be respected.

I wish there were more to this series just as I wish there was more to "Damned." But at least neither of them wear out their welcome. They're cut short before they get stale.

British humour like this is so different from American humor. We have a need on this side of the pond for the happy ending, and there's a greater freedom in British productions to let failure end a story. Much more realistic, sure, and harder to watch, but I think it's more satisfying.

But there are far more good points than bad . I particularly liked Vicky Pepperdine in the role of Dr Pippa Moore and is the interaction between Jo Brand and Joanne Scanlan. One or two of the episodes fell a bit flat but certainly episodes one and three of the first series had me crying with laughter. Well worth a watch to make your own mind up

This could have been a good series. The hospital setting has plenty of promise, the acting is good and the script and situations interesting - with plenty of chuckles.

But the camera work is awful to the point of being unwatchable. What is the point of all those motion-sickness inducing sweeps, all those abrupt changes of focus, all those blurry shots of nothing?

Director Peter Capaldi must take the blame. Why was his chosen shooting style given the nod? I hoped series 2 might be an improvement over the three episodes of series 1, but its opening episode was just as bad. Enough was enough.

Incidentally, when Capaldi appeared as a doctor in the first series the camera treated him more kindly. What vanity, what cinematographic incompetence!