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…

Early evening crime in Britain is pretty wholesome stuff: more soap than episodic drama. Later in the evening things get a bit tougher and more inventive (with, like, time travel) but before the kids are in bed it’s all nicely-starched uniforms and cheeky shoplifters. Holby Blue’s an interesting effort to bridge the gap. A pre-watershed slot and a cast of soap stalwarts mashed up with grittier, more urban plots and some well-staged action. This episode’s final scene is genuinely dark and affecting; lit like a movie, it’s more like something from the mean streets of Baltimore or Miami than a made-up town in primetime Britain.