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.

Set on a geriactric ward in a NHS hospital..Getting On is one of the best comedies of 2010. Jo Brand is a funny woman and turns out to be a great comic character actor. She is so convincing as the as the ward's dogsbody, the portrayal is as true to life as you will get and without being reminded Jo Brand was a former psychiatric nurse..this part must be written on her experiences. Joanna Scanlan and Ricky Grover are great and Vikki Pepperdine just brilliant. This first series is possibly the best and funniest scripts I have seen for a while. I am writing this on just seeing the first three episodes on DVD. I have just ordered the second series and hope it is as good as the first.

What I have seen so far 'Getting on' is as good as 'The Office'..I hope it gets even better. The BBC seem to be putting on a lot of good stuff of late. This certainly has cheered me and a few others up these dark winter nights.

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!

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.