High five leaves me low
HERE are five fabulous TV treats you can look forward to tonight. See if you can guess what they have in common. One: Police arrive at a crash scene to discover that the recklessly driven vehicle they’ve been chasing has an aggressive 12-year-old at the wheel in this week’s POLICE INTERCEPTORS (C5, 7pm).
Two: Officers have to deal with an inebriated middle-aged lady who’s crashed her car into a Peak District farmer’s wall in TRAFFIC COPS (C5, 8pm).
Three: A Lincolnshire police constable must respond to a report of a man attacking a bouncer – and another who’s been kicking in windows – in INSIDE THE FORCE: 24/7 (C5, 9pm).
Four: Paramedics fear for a family who’ve been involved in a terrible road accident in CASUALTY: EVERY SECOND COUNTS (C5, 10pm).
Five: and last, but no means least depressing, RESCUE: EXTREME MEDICS (9pm) – the Channel 4 documentary series following the Scottish Trauma Network – features an 80-year-old lady trapped in her car on a rural country road, a German tourist stranded on a remote hillside after fracturing her ankle and a quad bike rider who’s broken his arm after falling from his vehicle at 50mph.
OK, do you give up? “Give up” as in “quit trying to guess the connection between these programmes”, I mean, not “give up” as in “lose the will to live” (although you may feel inclined to do both).
The answer is that all five of them have me wondering if I’m a little bit odd. Because I truly cannot begin to understand why anyone would want to watch documentaries like these.Violent behaviour, sickening injuries, confrontation, misery, distress – an endless stream of people either having the most hideous experience imaginable or doing their damnedest to make sure someone else does.
If you’re a fan of this kind of programme – and plenty of people must be or I’m guessing they wouldn’t exist – please feel free to drop me a line and explain their appeal. I really would love to know.
Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe you could even win me over, although I wouldn’t hold your breath.
Elsewhere, in episode four of THE SPLIT (BBC1, 9pm) – another show where no one has much fun, although they do have fewer quad bike accidents – Nathan (Stephen Mangan) chooses Kate’s (Lara Pulver) 12-week scan to announce he thinks their relationship is “moving too fast”.
Kate is not best pleased. “Work out what you want, Nathan,” she sighs. Seems fair enough. But from where I’m sitting, I think that’s already pretty clear.
What Nathan wants is a jolly good slap.