Watchification

The title of this week’s Holby City “Mad World” (sadly denied to us last week because of Big Cat Live) gave us all the clues we needed as to how the writers of this stellar hospital drama feel about mental health. It was encrusted with some diamond gaffs as Lola arrived at her new job as a medical officer at a residential mental home.

Art therapy was demonstrated by a couple of easels in a corridor, a couple of exterior shots of a lawn told us it was an opulent facility. But best of all was Lola’s response to her new environment from rolling her eyes at the cuts on the arm of a self-harmer, to laughing at an ex-colleague and victim of a mental breakdown because he wanted to be called by a different name to responding with a “God no!” when asked if she’d ever worked in a place like this before. You don’t have to be mad to watch it but…

How Simon Schama must curse the producers of The Tudors, so beautiful, so colourful, so…..Hollyoaks. Which means that it’s a must for anyone who favours style over substance. (Me). And despite knowing what happens in the end, I still hoped that Anne Boleyn, played by the superbly curvy mouthed and impossibly regal Natalie Dormer, would get a last minute reprieve, kick Henry into touch and rule supreme. In fact, coward that I am, I couldn’t watch her beheading, instead hid behind a cushion and muttered to myself about how much I hate the choice of a Playboy bunny to play wife number 3, Jane Seymour. Anyway series two sees Henry VIII (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) still managing to keep those pounds off and striding about court in a very handsome strop. Off with his head.

I’ve loved these programmes, and this one is a great example of how wonderful it is to have undiluted access to an interviewee. GF Newman is a strange fish. A believer of reincarnation with no argument to support it, famous for imposing a vegan regime on film sets, and personally crediting himself as the inspiration for Dick Wolf‘s Law & Order series, he makes compelling viewing if for no other reason than he is really quite scary to watch. Like a coiled spring, or Hannibal Lector eyeing up his next victim, I’m surprised Lawson managed to stay so calm. Only a day or so left… Hurry, hurry, hurry.

Dr Who returns for what will no doubt be a triumphant fourth series. Tennant and Tate seemed to be shot in a golden light, reflecting perhaps the love and esteem in which Russell T Davies and the rest of the country holds them. Whether Tate will find the same place in the nation’s hearts that Billie Piper did remains to be seen, how funny it is that Martha (the sidekick that came between them), is already such a distant memory. As you know if you’ve read my column in Time Out, I would much rather have another assistant. Let the viewers decide. P.S Shame those little Adiposian babies didn’t get to use their fangs.