TV REVIEW:IT'S ALWAYS brain surgery, isn't it? Maybe there have been glamorous TV gastroenterologists or urologists or doctors who spend their days snapping on the latex gloves and doing prostate exams, but when TV writers think of putting someone in scrubs (remember in the old days when a white coat was shorthand for doctor? Now it's V-necked PJs) they think of a brain surgeon.
So that's what James Nesbitt is in Monroe(UTV, Thursday), a new hospital drama; though, as Nesbitt is pretty much the same in everything and has so firmly established himself as the go-to guy for directors who want someone a bit flawed, blokeish, decent and twinkly-eyed, he's never going to make a convincing surgeon. But the biggest flaw in this new drama is that it's so busy referencing other hospital dramas (deliberately or accidentally, I couldn't tell), most notably House, that it forgets to establish its own identity.
Monroe is a cocky, brilliant, unconventional surgeon with a troubled home life (his wife, played by Susan Lynch, leaves him in the first episode) and a truckload of clever lines. "Try not to be patronising," he advises a junior doctor, "though I realise that your age, education and social class make this an almost impossible request." If some TV anorak told me that Houseused that line in season two, episode nine I wouldn't be the least surprised. Or his snarl to another cowering junior doctor: "Do you know what Voltaire said about medicine? Look it up." The Houselines multiplied like cells and took over.
Monroe's sidekick, the anaesthetist, is called Dr Shepherd, a name that all doctor-drama fans know is owned by dreamy Patrick Dempsey in Grey's Anatomy. The plot in Monroewas strong, though, and unusually subtle and thought-provoking. A young woman comes around from neurosurgery and appears to have suffered permanent brain damage during the operation. Her husband, saying that she's not the person he married, abandons her bedside.
After a good man-to-man talking-to from Monroe he returns. His wife, who has now regained her faculties (a bit of a script cop-out), is none the wiser about how shallow and selfish her husband really is.
The knowing references continued with his arch-enemy, the attractive (of course) cardiologist Dr Bremner (Sarah Parish, a GP in Mistresses, so this is a promotion, then).
“I’m not defensive,” she tells Monroe. “I’m just indifferent to your twinkly self-regard.” I predict a tryst in the medicine cupboard by episode three.
GARDENING MAKEOVER programmes are rarely as earthy as Dermot's Secret Garden(RTÉ1, Thursday). In last week's first episode we learned that the well-known gardener Dermot O'Neill had bought Clondeglass, a derelict Victorian walled garden and cottage in Co Laois, after his Dublin house was repossessed following a period of unemployment. That was in 2001, and work only started some years later, so this was never going to be one of those pretty-looking instant-makeover shows.
By the end of the first episodetwo powerful battles with nature were running side by side: the restoration of the garden and O’Neill’s battle with cancer, which was diagnosed during the shoot. He chose to continue making the series, and at times it made for raw viewing, with a frail O’Neill, head bald from chemotherapy, being filmed at St Vincent’s hospital. “Emotionally I feel exhausted,” he said, “Not a day goes by when I don’t think of Clondeglass.”
In this week’s episode O’Neill, after nearly three months in hospital, returns to his walled garden, driven by his dad – the participation of his family and friends gives the series an intimacy. His Laois neighbour Tanguy de Toulgoet, an expert gardener, had been preparing soil and planting so that by the time spring arrived the garden was coming into bloom. A year later, with O’Neill looking so much better, it was a riot of colour.
There’s nuts and bolts stuff, too, such as the names of flowers and which hens are best for hatching – O’Neill’s goal is to become self-sufficient. Because this series was filmed over such a long period, and because it’s ultimately all about nature, there’s a real sense of time passing and what the seasons bring. Pat Laffan’s softly authoritative voiceover perfectly suits this intimate look at one man’s passion for gardening and his determination to live.
'THE RELENTLESS FLOW of time has driven the evolution of the universe and created many extraordinary things," said Prof Brian Cox, top TV boffin, in his new series, Wonders of the Universe(BBC1, Sunday). In episode one the concepts he explained included the arrow of time and the second law of thermodynamics. (Who says TV is a dumbed-down medium?) But even with the extraordinary and stunning locations (one minute Peru, the next Patagonia) and Cox's easy-on-the-eye appeal (the man never stops smiling) it's hard going.
Strangely, it’s not so much the science (Cox communicates the laws of physics in a way that makes it easy – well, easier – to understand), it’s that the figures are too big to take in. While his explanation of entropy using a sandcastle in the desert in Namibia was clear (isn’t there sand in Bognor? Couldn’t he have done it there?), the numbers were impossible to grasp. He talked about the oldest stars in the universe, with the “light of 10 million billion suns”, which were born “13 billion years ago – 600 million years after the big bang” and so on. But the good news is that “the universe will go on for 100 trillion years before the sun explodes”. After a while it’s easier to ignore the maths and let the graphics of swirling galaxies, the beautiful scenery and Cox’s soft monotone wash over you.
CLEVEREST BOY in the kitchen Heston Blumenthal's new series, Heston's Mission Impossible(Channel 4, Tuesday), sees him trying to improve the food in various institutions, and in episode three he took on making over in-flight meals.
Working with British Airways (a fantastic corporate coup: the programme couldn’t have loved the airline more), he set about trying to upgrade the trolley service. It turns out that it’s not simply a question of hydrating mummified meat dishes and crisping up soggy veg. The real problem is the combination of cabin pressure and low humidity, which means that passengers’ perception of taste at altitude is hugely reduced.
Meals need to have six times more flavour if people are to taste them at 35,000ft. Heston devised a cheffy menu that looked great, and passengers loved it – though with the famous Michelin star chef looming over them asking what they thought of the seaweed shepherd’s pie, I’m not sure too many people would be brave enough to say, “Nah, it’s rubbish.”
Oddly, there wasn’t too much focus on the compulsory unappetising starter – on each tray sat a saline nasal spray that passengers had to use before eating. The thought of a planeful of people sluicing out their sinuses, with all the honking and sniffing that involves? Can’t see that idea taking off.
What not to miss next week
Hugh Bonneville stars in Twenty Twelve (BBC Four, Monday, 10pm), a new comedy about the organisers of the London Olympics. In the first episode a clock is put in the Thames to count down to the event – just like Dublin’s Millennium Clock, with pretty much the same results.
