Holby City review: It’s moved!

From this week I’ll be reviewing Holby City for metro.co.uk , so for the full review that you know and (hopefully) love, please head over there and have a look.

Meanwhile, this week’s Holby in bullet points:

(Series 20, ep. 28 ‘Into the Light’ by Becky Prestwich and Nick Fisher 10.7.18)

– Gaskell taught Roxanna to shriek in the Shrubbery.

– And she needed a good shriek by the end, after discovering that Prof Gaskell has been keeping a lot of secrets about his trial.

– Jac is putting her faith in the Prof and Roxanna to sort out the problems with their trial, despite finding out that another of the test subjects has died.

– Ethan Hunt escaped the ED to roam the big corridors upstairs, where we found he wasn’t exactly a stranger to Roxanna and the Prof (and not just because they watch him on Casualty).

– The Prof ended the episode doing some more of his trademark staring at patients – but the patient this time was none other than Essie Di Lucca.

– Essie was recovering from surgery after Hanssen and a non-speaking obs & gynae expert (where’s Fleur Fanshawe?) had operated on her for ovarian cancer.

– We met Raf’s dad, Enzo.

– Donna was house-hunting, but suitable properties were out of her reach. She’s now decided to train to do botox and whatnot as a way of earning extra cash.

– And they had a lovely selection of cupcakes at Pulses.

Holby City: Killer microbes everywhere

(Series 20, ep. 26 ‘Fallen Idol’ by Kathrine Smith 27.6.18) Nicky accidentally dropped a flask of what may or may not have been E. coli, meaning she and Xavier were trapped in a room with only half a bag of chicken crisps for company while they waited for the decontamination team to arrive. “I didn’t know I was stepping into a toxic germ-dungeon,” Zav complained, though he’s worked so much on AAU that he must be used to it by now.

This was the opportunity for some serious truth-telling, with Zav telling Nicky she wastes her potential by drinking too much and having a bit of a chaotic lifestyle. In return she had a go at him about how he was a rubbish boyfriend to Meena, and we finally found the deep secret in his past – that his parents blame him for his younger brother’s death. That’s as much as we were told, which was a bit annoying because in real life someone with the famed people skills of Nicky would have wanted Detail. I know I would have. Possibly the details are being left for another time, maybe when Maman et/ou Papa Duvall appear in person having succumbed to the Curse of the Holby Relative and in need of the medical skills of their sibling-killing son. 

Holby City: Jac’s desperate measures

(Series 20, ep. 23 ‘None but the Brave’ by Gerard Sampaio 5.6.18) Jac’s back! Her hair is shorter and wavier! But apart from that, she isn’t feeling any better for her time off. In fact, according to Roxanna, she’s getting worse and might be in a wheelchair within a year. Nooo!!!

The reason Roxanna was looking at Jac’s scans is that Jac wants to be Prof Gaskell’s new trial subject. Naturally this is worrying news – we’ve seen the trail of destruction that the Prof tends to leave behind him. Even the Prof was worried. Despite his belief in his own god-like legend, he knows it would be terrible publicity to incapacitate or kill Holby’s top CT surgeon. So he asked Sacha to have a word with her and talk her out of it. Sacha’s opinion of Prof Gaskell is exactly the same as mine – that he pushes the boundaries, but without due concern for the individual patient.

Unfortunately, boundary-pushing is exactly what Jac wants. Though she was almost swayed by Fletch’s persuasive argument that if she dies, Emma will grow up without a mother. Almost. Because she can’t visualise herself as anything but a surgeon, so she’s willing to take a risk. I’m already extremely tense at the prospect of watching that particular piece of surgery. 

Holby City: Gaskell has a proposition for Ric

(Series 20, ep. 15 ‘Tate Gallery’ by Joe Ainsworth 10.4.18) Number one reason to like new CEO Abigail Tate: she wears slippers under her desk. Number one reason to dislike her: she uses the phrase “blue sky thinking.” She’s no Hanssen, that’s for sure. He’d never wear slippers under his desk, and he was accustomed to giving his pep talks from the stairs next to AAU. Abi gives hers via video.

She wanted blue sky thinking and “game changing ideas” from the entire staff team, and the prize was a lot of money to spend developing the winning idea. That’s even more of an incentive than a Pulses’ gift card, I’m sure you’ll agree. Ric thought he’d have another go with the artificial bladder idea that got such short shrift last week and Sacha also had some exciting thing to pitch. Judging all of this was Abi, Prof Gaskell, a man who didn’t say anything and Sanjay from EastEnders (Deepak Verma). 

Holby City: Gaskell takes risks and Ric risks Jason’s cake

(Series 20, ep. 14 ‘Tete a Tate’ by Joe Ainsworth 3.1.18) Today we met new CEO Abigail Tate (Olivia Poulet). She’s a heart surgeon, so well done to the fictional HR department for finding a Hanssen/Jac combo (jobs-wise) at such short notice.

It remains to be seen what she’ll be like as a CEO. Her managerial style seems at first glance to be ‘by the book and a tad on the cautious side,’ but that’s perhaps sensible given that she had one doctor just back from a spell in the nick and another one attempting who-knows-what maverick stuff all over the place. At times like this a bit of caution is probably what’s needed. All the same, she could have been more supportive of Ric’s artificial bladder idea.

That’s the CEO side of her job, but we haven’t seen what Abi’s like with a scalpel in her hand yet. What Fletch has already concluded is that she is no Jac Naylor. He was being especially fussy with her because he was rather fond of her patient, Hannah (Sasha Clarke), who was one of Evie’s (sort of) teachers, but Abi is going to have her work cut out impressing Holby’s best bearded nurse. 

Holby City: Just Oliver

(Series 20, ep. 13 ‘No Matter Where You Go, There You Are – Part Two’ by Andy Bayliss 27.3.18) Last week’s cliffhanger made us wait an entire week for the verdict in Ric’s trial. And this week, we got that verdict, though it was a very low-key affair. We didn’t see the courtroom. We didn’t even see Ric. We heard the news as relayed to Ollie by Meena, and then Serena popped up to Darwin to present Fletch with a bottle of celebratory Shiraz.

Celebratory? Yes! Because the news is good. Ric Griffin is a free man!

Having swiftly wrapped up the ‘Ric’s Prison Hell’ storyline, the episode settled in to the topic at hand, which focused on Oliver Valentine and his determination to get back to being a doctor once again, and Henrik Hanssen’s ongoing struggle to come to terms with the consequences of his son’s actions. 

Holby City: A man of character

(Series 20, ep. 12 ‘No Matter Where You Go, Part One’ by Patrick Homes 20.3.18) It was the day of Ric’s trial – and at the very end of the episode the verdict was in! But we’re going to have to wait for another week to find out what it is, because this was the first of a two-parter. AAAARRGHH!!

What we did discover was the reason Ric has been so tight-lipped about what was going on during the three hours he was away from the hospital on the fateful day of Mrs Warren’s death. We know he was helping Jason, who was having trouble with ex-girlfriend Lola (Megan Jones), but what we didn’t know was that he was delivering Lola’s baby, in a car. And the reason he still won’t tell anyone about that is that the father of the baby, who’d been beating Lola up, also happens to be a policeman. If any of it was mentioned in court, he might find out where Lola and the baby are. This matters to Ric because he’s a man of conscience who would do the right thing anyway, but as an extra factor he’d just heard from his daughter Jess that she was thinking of going back to her abusive ex. The refuge Ric took Lola and the baby to was one Jess had had to make use of in the past.