Holby City: Digby saves the day, if not the episode

(Series 15, ep.34)  Due to house moving etc, I’m still forced to watch Holby City on iPlayer with very poor bandwidth. Maybe it summarises my feelings about this episode when I tell you I didn’t especially mind the regular pauses for “buffering.”

What was wrong with it? No Darwin, hardly any doctoring, and two, rather tedious, storylines. I hate being critical, honestly I do, but once in a while a dud episode happens along and this was it.

The Coroners Court scenes were dull and even the presence of the sublime Guy Henry failed to lift them. It was only at the end when it really came to life.  Dominic put his bunny-boiling scheme into action by claiming that Malick had given Amanda Layton a drug to suppress her respiratory system. Digby saved the day with a wodge of research to show the aforementioned drug would have a completely different effect (wouldn’t Hanssen have known this?). It looked like Dominic’s career as a doctor was in ruins and he’d have to fall back to being a hair model, but Malick stepped up to the witness-box and came clean about his “error of judgement” in ripping the jeans off his junior colleague. Understandably, Nathan was none too happy and left the courtroom, but it was the first time Malick has really shown much of a backbone.  

Holby City: Honesty is the best policy

(Series 15, ep.33)  I’m extremely sorry for the lateness of this post. I’ve been moving house – traumatic in itself – but no sooner had we started to unpack the boxes than the hideous truth dawned. We have broadband speeds of dial-up levels and the TV aerial is not working (I have no mobile phone coverage either). Though I’m still living in London and am only half a mile from my previous address, it feels like I’m living in the past.

So this episode of Holby has been watched on iPlayer in bite-sized chunks at off-peak times and I hope you’ll forgive me if the quality isn’t quite what you’d hope for.

To cheer myself up (did I mention I’ve also done my back in lifting heavy boxes and am sitting here wishing Camoxidan wasn’t fictional?), let’s start with Jac Naylor, Jonny Mac and the baby who shall henceforth be known as Jaccy Maccy Jr. There was the loveliest scene since the scene where he was stitching up a cut on her forehead (he did a great job on that, btw – no scar visible at all), when he gave her a wee ultrasound and they saw the baby for the first time. Jac gave one of her trademark looks – one of those that only lasts for seconds but says so much. Just in case the moment threatened to get too emotional, Jonny printed out a picture and she suggested he stick it on the his fridge at home, knowing how much he loved a cliche. The banter between Jac and Jonny was brilliant throughout the episode. I particularly loved it when they almost had a bonding moment on the Walkway of Wisdom and he put his arm around her shoulders as they walked away from the camera. How heartwarming, I thought, that she lets him be so familiar.  “Don’t touch me!” she snarled.

Chrissie was feeling a bit like that re Sacha, only in their case it was “Don’t touch Daniel!” The fruit of her womb turns out to be a bone marrow match for Sacha’s daughter, which would be lovely if only Sacha hadn’t tried to have him tested without telling her. Understandably, she wasn’t keen on wee Daniel having painful and possibly risky procedures, even if it meant a chance for Rachel to recover from her leukaemia. I did actually sympathise with Chrissie, who really only wanted to be consulted and feel part of the decision making, rather than being presented with a decision after it had been made.

Malick was suffering from the ramifications of his decision to let Amanda Layton die, and having a fling with Doting Dominic afterwards. Basically, Malick has been suspended and that might be the least of his troubles, as Doting Dominic may be about to go a little bit bunny boilerish after seeing Malick heading off home with Nathan.

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Holby City: The woman that never blinks

(Series 15, ep.22)  The theme of parents and children ran through all three stories in last night’s Holby City, both for the patients and the staff.

In Darwin Jac found an ideal patient to practise her exciting Japanese surgery on. It quickly became obvious that the patient was less than ideal, as she had a phobia of hospitals after being in an accident in which her son died. Then it was discovered that she was pregnant, but it wasn’t until she was in theatre and the cry of “We’ve got a bleed!” went up, that Jac realised she’d taken some medication to make her miscarry, as she thought having a new baby was betraying her dead son.

All complex enough, but made even worse because Jac was suffering from severe pains herself and had to leave the operating theatre. She tried to pass it off as period pains, but Jonny Mac wasn’t buying that. “Come on,” he said, “You’re the woman that never blinks.” He’s actually wrong about that, as Jac has the most sarcastic blink I’ve ever seen. He was worried that the problem might be her remaining kidney, but Jac gave herself a quick ultrasound scan and ran the results (anonymously) past Serena, who said it was probably something gynaecological. Oh, typical. No sooner do we get Jac and Jonny happily back together – she even allowed him to be seen arriving at the hospital with her – and there’s a spanner in the works. Not literally, as that would have shown up on the ultrasound.  

Holby City: Patient X

(Series 15, ep.19)  Good old Dr Oliver Valentine. He’s only gone and found someone in Baltimore who can possibly sort out Dr Tara Lo’s brain tumour. Hurrah! Problem is, the Baltimore expert has only had good results on tumours that have behaved themselves and not got any bigger for a long time – and apparently Tara’s has started getting bigger. Oli doesn’t know this, because she doesn’t tell him very much. He hasn’t noticed, either, that she’s gone a bit absent-minded (he’s used to Elliot Hope) and when she passed out in the washroom and bashed her head on a basin, he was content to accept her explanation that a slippery floor was to blame. Meanwhile, Tara has included herself in her own study of “The Psychology of Mortality in the Young” (it’s going to be a gripping read when it’s finished) as Patient X.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for one evening, we had Dr Gemma Wilde in deadly danger. Remember Dean,  who’d been in the war in Sierra Leone and who forced Dr Luc Hemingway to start getting to grips with his past? He was back. His estranged wife was a patient and because Dean is more than a bit disturbed, he wasn’t allowed to see her. It all culminated in Dean, Mrs Dean and Gemma locked in a room together and Gemma having to intubate the wife with the aid of Sacha on speaker-phone.