Telly Talk: Doctor! Doctor!
Once I’d finished running around and shouting at the telly; “It’s him! It’s him off of Star-wotsit! That clever stuttering Daniel fellow and now he’s a surgeon and hasn’t he filled out well…” I settled in to take in the brand new medical and slightly supernatural drama Saving Hope. Starring Michael Shanks, as previously seen on Stargate.
The thing that first struck me about Saving Hope is how incredibly clean and modern its hospital is compared to the one in Holby City. Unlike Holby City, you get to find out if something’s a tricky situation by swelling music suddenly arriving out of nowhere. And also unlike Holby City everything is reasonably neat, even when it’s messy. A bit like Nurse Jackie. I’m thinking it’s a transatlantic thing.
“Maybe they don’t do stark in Americaland”
Perhaps in North America they’re so used to having aural prompts it’s second nature to hear a little light piano tinkling as a serious procedure is explained to the distraught fiancée (major part of the plot and I’ll get to that soon, promise) but I’ve always felt that the stark emptiness of an absence of soundtrack hits home a lot harder the starkness of any medical situation. Maybe they don’t do stark in North Americaland (Saving Hope is Canadian). At least not mainstream. Now I’m curious to find out what Mike Leigh’s box office figures were for his last release on the other side of the Pond, but I digress.
Saving Hope focuses on the pairing of two doctors; Dr Charlie Harris, played by the aforementioned Michael Shanks, who is an established and respected surgeon and obviously one of the best in the country – and Dr Alex Reid, his younger general surgery colleague and fiancée. They lurve each other so much and are about to get married on this very day when a terrible accident befalls them on their way to the wedding. Just saying – I ask you! Who does a full shift at work on their wedding day and then skips off to get married in the evening in a shared cab from a cab rank? So much opportunity for a failure to appear on time, but clearly Alex was never going to be a Bridezilla.
Letting you know that they are in an accident doesn’t give much away as it happens within the first three minutes of the programme, leaving him in a coma and her in a bit of a state, but not as much as you’d really expect. She says she copes best if she keeps busy but it still comes as something of a surprise when she grabs her white coat and heads back onto the wards to tell one rather surprised teen that the baby she’d been ignoring was turning up pretty darn tootin’ soon.
There’s plenty of opportunities for random medical accidents (the love potion gone wrong is rather sweet) and the premise that Dr Charlie is still wandering the wards watching what’s going on in his out-of-body wedding tux works quite well. It’s a good set-up leaving plenty of scope for this to go anywhere, from haunted morgue to whatever secrets Alex may have hidden that Charlie never saw through his love-soft-focused gaze. There’s potential. After a bit I barely noticed the emotional prompts to tear up. *sniff* And with Canadian television award nominations already out there and a second series in the bag, these are strong indications that this potential is seized upon and utterly worked. Which is good. It’s always nice to find a new show to watch that makes you chuckle when it shouldn’t but still draws a lump to the throat when it should. Although clearly I simply had something in my eye.
Saving Hope, Watch, Wednesday 7 August 2013
