Holby City: Not your average WAG

(Series 19, ep. 42 ‘Baggage’ by Patrick Homes 25.7.17) Since Donna’s return there’s been a bit of mystery surrounding her. Why isn’t she relishing her WAG status and swanning about getting spa treatments and buying over-priced luxury goods for her swanky mansion, rather than mopping up pee, pus and sick in AAU? Why does she look sad when she thinks nobody is looking? And why has her credit card been declined?

We discovered the answers to all these questions when her niece/adopted daughter Mia (Briana Shann) turned up at Holby. One thing I especially loved was that Hanssen remembered Mia. I remember them having a sweet little scene together when he found her alone in the corridor in her first incarnation. Hanssen also very sweetly paid Donna’s bill when Pulses declined her credit card. He was very busy being Enigmatic and Delightful all over the hospital this week. 

Holby City: How messy life can be

(Series 19, ep. 40 ‘Sleep Well’ by Elliot Hope and Johanne McAndrew 11.7.17) Fran isn’t evil, or a villain, or a baddie. She’s a hurt, angry, damaged person. Jac knows this, because she’s similarly damaged. Where they differ is that Jac has dealt with all the hurt she’s suffered over the years by exercising a huge amount of self control – sometimes Jac is just held together by willpower alone. Fran is more needy and volatile. 

Holby City: A tale of two faces

(Series 19, ep. 38 ‘Paper Wishes’ by Patrick Homes and Ailsa Macaulay 27.6.17) Jac Naylor looked so sad all through this episode. Diminished, almost, like a little bit of her had gone with Jasmine. She put a brave face on it (“Stop looking at me like I’m about to break!” she told Zosia and everyone else who was gazing at her in sympathy), but it was just there behind the mask the whole time. She tried to work and be her usual snippy self, but Jasmine was on her mind all day. Her patient was a woman (Roisin O’Neil) who believed her illness was caused by karma because she’d had an argument with her mother, and her mother died before they could make up. Karma-woman liked to write wishes on paper planes – well, it’s nice to have a hobby. Jac wrote a wish on a paper plane too: “I wish I’d told Jasmine I love her.” Too, too sad. 

Holby City: When a pocket is a loaded gun

(Series 19, ep. 37 ‘For You May Be the Next to Die…‘ by Patrick Homes) The hour started with an unsettling, dreamlike scene of young Fran and young Jac, presumably in the terrible care home they lived in when they were kids. We saw Fran – geeky and awkward-looking – going to Jac (who was uncannily, recognisably Jac) for comfort. A horrible song full of nasty death imagery played over it.

Then, in the apparent safety of Holby, there was Jasmine, singing the same song to herself. It was one of Paula Burrows’ favourites, apparently. Even if we’d never heard of Paula before, I think we’d have quite a clue about her personality just from that detail. Morven thought the song was horrible, but Morven is still too close to losing Arthur for death to be an abstract notion to her. To Jasmine, a naturally optimistic, full-of-life person,  it was just a catchy tune. 

Holby City: This time last year

(Series 19, ep. 35 ‘The Hard Way Home’ by Martin Jameson and Nick Fisher) Has it really been a year already? On this very day in 2016, Holby and the world lost Arthur Digby, husband, friend, doctor and all-round lovely man. The repercussions of that have lasted ever since, especially among those closest to him – Morven, Zosia and Dominic. Morven’s reactions have been more straightforward, and on the anniversary of his death we found her trying to work up the courage to face a memorial get-together, and sobbing her heart out on the stairs.

Dominic has had a torrid time of it in the last twelve months. After losing his best friend, he found himself in an abusive relationship with Isaac. His self esteem at an all-time low, he’s recently been taking to the gym like a man possessed and throwing back steroids. This has made him all angry and shouty, and this culminated in him getting rather nasty with Sacha in theatre. It reminded me of when Oliver Valentine turned on Elliot Hope after Tara’s death, because Sacha, like Elliot, is a delightful human being and beloved mentor, but also like Elliot he has his vulnerabilities and in some ways lays himself open to attack. Sacha doesn’t get cross very often, but I rather like it when he does, and he did. 

Holby City: Oh Hec!

(Series 19, ep. 34 ‘Twist of the Knife’ by Jon Sen) Of course we know that Mo wouldn’t ever harm her baby. She’s a doctor, for one thing, and she’s Mo, for another thing. Mo just wouldn’t do anything like that. And yet she almost persuaded herself that she could have hurt him, and she did it so well that she almost persuaded me. Mr T was already thinking she might have (and that’s what got Mo to doubting herself in the first place). 

Holby City: Familiar faces

(Series 19, ep. 32 ‘Project Aurous’ by Claire Miller) I loved Carli Norris when she was last on Holby as Fran, so it was very nice to see her back. Not so nice for Jac Naylor, though. Even though she’d promised to support Fran in that dramatic encounter on the roof, it was like one of those situations where you bump into an old acquaintance in the street, insist you really must meet up for coffee one day, and then spend the next few days hoping they won’t follow up on it. But now here was Fran, ready to call in that favour (to get Jac to help her prosecute the care home they used to live in), and with the added problem of having a super-complex heart condition that Jac was best placed to sort out. As if this wasn’t enough trouble for Holby’s snarkiest surgeon, she was also about to unleash a ground-breaking piece of research on an excited world. Hanssen had his eye on her.