Reality TV at its very best -- and binge-drink Britain at its worst
THE FIRST impulse, as Superhospital (ITV) reeled off statistics about the true cost of binge- drinking in Britain, was to reach for a bracing restorative with a splash of tonic.
The second was to have a cup of nice herbal tea instead. Moderation in all things, after all.
One boy of 20 was brought to Accident and Emergency, unconscious and wracked with fits after his family found him slumped on the sofa.
Unable to revive him, Dr Dan the A&E consultant rushed him for a brain scan and blood tests, but could not find the cause of his collapse.
By the time the young man had been comatose for two hours, Dr Dan was deeply worried . . . until he discovered he had consumed a litre of homebrewed Polish vodka and a gallon of beer.
‘He can put a bit away,’ said the family, proudly.
Dr Dan left him to sleep it off, while he attended to another patient, who was staggering around the ward and lashing out at staff. An inveterate drunk, he was well known to Malcolm and Scott, the Royal Derby’s security team.
‘I love you,’ he mumbled as big, bald Malc restrained him, before yelling abuse at the nurse who was trying to calm him down.
This new, four-part series uses rapid cutting between dozens of cameras to build a kaleidoscopic portrait of an NHS powerhouse so huge it is almost a city. More than a
COVER VERSION OF THE NIGHT: As Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) bowed out of The Good Wife (More4), the soulful Sixties hit The Dark End Of The Street was playing. But who was singing? Not country legends Linda Ronstadt or Emmylou Harris . . . but a gorgeous, modern take by Cat Power. Spine-tingling.
million people are treated every year; 8,000 staff work there; the car park looks bigger than the Peak District and it is always overflowing.
But the most shocking figure was the proportion of booze-related admissions. About 10 per cent of A&E patients are there for alcoholic illnesses or injuries. Multiply that across the country, and the cost of Britain’s out- of- control bingeing must run into many billions.
It’s not only the emergency care. On the detox ward for patients with chronic liver disease, every bed was full, mostly with pathetic cases of men in their 40s and 50s — broken, shuffling wrecks.
They were lucky that the senior ward sister, Jayne, who had been nursing even longer than most of them had been drinking, took a no-nonsense approach.
‘You don’t want patients where you have to be politically correct,’ she announced. ‘Some of them you have to threaten with a backhander, and they respond well to that.’
But she had a gentle touch as she shaved away the white, matted growth of beard of a 51-year- old man called James, who had been drinking solidly for six months since his mother died. He hadn’t bathed or eaten properly for weeks, and he couldn’t stop crying: ‘ I don’t know whether to give up or keep trying,’ he mumbled.
This is reality TV put to its best possible use. With quickfire editing, it conveyed the sheer workload at the hospital, while emphasising how much effort the staff made to treat every one of the million-plus patients as individuals.
At the other end of the reality spectrum, The Tribe (C4) is slow and laboured, overshadowed with the nagging suspicion that the footage is being manipulated.
The soundbites by rural Hamar tribesmen in southern Ethiopia appear to be cherry-picked for their shock value, and each one is followed by lingering reaction shots of other members of the clan, usually the womenfolk.
How many of those were real reactions, filmed at the same moment? We are not told, and the fixed camera angles make it impossible for us to be sure. There’s a glee in the editing that borders on racism, as every scene emphasises how unacceptable the Hamar cultural attitudes towards women and children would be in the West.
And when Ayke Muko and his sons are not being provocative enough, a voice off-camera goads them: say something outrageous, Ayke Muko, give us a laugh.
One thing is common both to Britain and to sub-Saharan Africa, and that’s the alcohol. The Hamar spent weeks brewing a real ale that looked like watery porridge, though this superficial, disrespectful documentary had no interest in factual details, such as how the drink was made.
We just saw endless shots of Hamar people nursing hangovers. How hilarious.