Holby City: The baby whisperer and the baby daddy

(Series 21, ep. 8 ‘Never Say Never’ by Nick Fisher and Patrick Homes 19.2.19) For my full review of this episode, pop yourself over to Metro. Before you go, a couple of random thoughts.

– Chloe’s ‘baby whisperer’ routine was a bit weird, wasn’t it? I’m getting a bit of an Adele Effanga vibe about both Chloe and Ange, in the sense that every week we’re being told how marvellous they are, and the more I’m told someone is marvellous the less inclined I am to join their fan club (this is why I’ve never read a Harry Potter). I like marvellousness to reveal itself organically (like it has with Xavier, but more of him later).

– There is, of course, the prospect that Chloe’s marvellousness has to be set up pretty quickly in order for us to know what a huge loss it’ll be to the medical world when whatever is wrong with her hands starts to impact on her work. Remember Ange noticing that there was something wrong with Chloe’s hands? And this week she clumsily dropped a mug and even more clumsily glued the handle to herself rather than the mug. Frankly this is not a person you’d want to be operating on you.

– Zosia’s pregnant! Who’s the father, do you think? Someone in America, or has she been paying visits to Ollie? I really hope it’s Ollie. I know he and Zosia are technically both fictional, but they’d have the most beautiful children.

– I loved how Jac was missing Frieda. We’re all missing Frieda.

– Xavier. When we first met him he seemed a bit of a twonk, and twonkiness does occasionally rear its head with him. But my goodness, he loves the bones of Donna, doesn’t he? He looks at her like she’s the most wonderful human being on the planet, which she might well be. He’s adorable, especially since he sorted out that pointy bit at the back of his hair.

– I also liked Donna’s interactions with the woman who’d left her youngish daughters on a cliff top with a little tent because she reckoned they were tough. Donna was genuinely horrified at how this woman didn’t give her kids hugs and tell them she loved them. Like me, she was relieved to hear that they’d abandoned the tent and gone to McDonalds to wait for their dad to pick them up.

Holby City: ‘Nobody dies today,’ he said

(Series 20, ep. 39 ‘Undoing’ by Nick Fisher 25.9.18) Head over to Metro for a full review of this episode, but before you go here are a few additional thoughts.

– Just when you think the Gaskell storyline can’t get any darker and more twisted, it gets darker and more twisted. Paul McGann has been genuinely terrifying in the last few episodes, as Gaskell has shown he’ll go to any lengths to carry on his research. It’s like there’s a ligature in his own head that shuts off any compassion and empathy that might risk diverting him from his path.

– I’m going to miss Roxanna. I liked her as a character and Hermione Gulliford as an actress. I’m sad that Roxanna never had the chance to go out for a night on the Shiraz with Serena because she always had something else to worry about. From spending weeks frowning at Oliver Valentine trying to will him to recover, to spending weeks frowning at Professor Gaskell, she’s never had a chance to relax.

– Of course Hanssen is going to miss her the most. His line in this episode, ‘I can’t lose anyone else, John,’ shows us that he’s really going to struggle to cope. Maybe Sacha and Frieda can invite him to join Holby Fight Club?

– Fletch really needs to sort his children out. It just isn’t on to have them wandering around the hospital all day long, even though I do enjoy seeing them.

– I loved Jac and Frieda giving Fletch advice about how to handle his teenage daughter. Though I can’t imagine that either of them was exactly what you’d call an average teenage girl.

– Frieda looked amazing in her boxing gear and I think they should rush out an action figure of her in time for Christmas. She’d be an excellent role model for all the un-average teenage girls. And boys.

– It’s lovely to have Sacha back and it’s very nice that he’s got a new hobby. I wonder if being in the basement gives him flashbacks to when he had a room there full of all the stuff that Chrissie didn’t want him to have hanging around at home?

(Picture: BBC)

Holby City: The Botox bar in my bedroom

(Series 20, ep. 34 ‘All Business’ by Nick Fisher 21.8.18) This week’s proper Holby City review can be found at Metro here. Before you go, I have to talk about Xavier giving Nicky’s bedroom away to Donna to use as a base for her Botox business.

This was puzzling on various levels, but I think I’ve worked it out. There are three bedrooms in that flat – Nicky’s, Meena’s and Frieda’s. As far as we know they haven’t got anyone in to replace Frieda. Remember back in the summer trailer, we saw Frieda asking an unclothed Zav, “What are you doing in my bedroom?”

So my guess is that either Zav meant to say that Donna could use Frieda’s room, or Nicky has moved in to Frieda’s, hence why hers is free to fill with lip fillers and what-have-you.

But there’s still one niggling question, which is why does Xavier have the right to organise who does and doesn’t occupy Meena and Nicky’s flat?

Elsewhere, I’m enjoying Roxanna putting on her sleuthing hat and deciding to get to the bottom of whatever the Prof is up to. And she gets to travel the world at the same time! She’s a smart woman.

And that was an ominous ending, wasn’t it? I’ve already seen next week’s Sacha-centred episode, and I have to tell you it’s absolutely brilliant, with a heart-wrenching performance from Bob Barrett.

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: It must be love

(Series 20, ep. 22 ‘Only a Word’ by Nick Fisher 29.5.18) You know that everyone in Holby is under the influence of The Curse – that thing that makes the friends, relatives and even casual acquaintances of Holby staff at high risk of accident or serious illness. The Curse was in full effect all over the place this week.

Frieda thought she’d seen the last of Roman, but here he was once again at her door. “Did you order one hot and handsome Ukrainian?” he asked, and this was as light and fun as the encounter got. Because Roman, having recovered from his own wounds, had now brought someone else for Frieda to stitch. 

Holby City: Smart juniors, full of smart juniosity

(Series 20, ep. 16 ‘New Ain’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be’ by Nick Fisher 17.4.18) At the beginning and end of this episode we saw F1 Nicky McKendrick as a child (played by Chanel Zinyemba). Even as a nipper she was practising her surgery skills on assorted toys. This is because she’s Super Keen (and possibly somewhat spooky).

It was her first day on Darwin, and she was Super Keen to make a good impression on Jac. So was Fletch, who’d got Jac a welcome back card and a cactus – “small, redhead, very prickly” as he confirmed with Sacha later, before they decided they’d take turns looking after it, both as a literal cactus and a metaphorical Jac. They won’t be able to look after Jac in person, because she’s looking after herself by taking more time off to get better from her gunshot injury. 

Holby City: You can’t take the military out of the girl

(Series 19, ep. 44 ‘Go Ugly Early’ by Nick Fisher 8.8.17) So that’s the end of the Trauma Unit. The little room with the plastic flaps instead of doors, that has been the site of so much pioneering traumatic excellence over the months, is now a little empty room, the flaps flapping plastically in the breeze of trolleys whizzing by. Most importantly, the Trauma Unit was the queendom of the utterly marvellous Berenice Wolfe, and her queendom is now gone and so is Bernie. 

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: An out-of-control monster

(Series 19, ep. 26) It was one of those starts-at-(almost)-the-end episodes, and the start showed a panicking Bernie, flanked by Fletch and Jasmine, busting down the door to the roof (which was locked for the first time in its history)…

What had happened to Serena? Would we find her teetering on the edge of the parapet, or already in a messy mush in the car park? Would Bernie be in time?

Flashback twelve hours, which luckily for us had been condensed to just one hour. We found Serena “stuck on some hideous merry-go-round of blame and regret.” This could be construed as a general description of AAU on a good day, but it was all about Elinor’s death and Serena’s reaction to it, particularly in her treatment of Jasmine. It was also affecting her family – she said that even loving Bernie didn’t make her feel better, and she was so horrible to and around Jason that he wanted to move back in with his old carer, Alan. “I’m officially an out-of-control monster,” Serena said. She was still unable to address any of this properly until she almost hit Jasmine and Jac was there to (magnificently) intervene. Serena was summoned to see Hanssen, who was infinitely kind and understanding and said there was almost nothing he wouldn’t do to help her. 

Holby City: Deck the halls with vows of Zollie

(Series 19, ep. 10) In a world of doom and gloom it really was nice to have an episode where no-one died, much festive-themed food was consumed (mainly by Mo) and one of the big Holby romances is back on again.

Producer Simon Harper said on Twitter that the reunion of Ollie and Zosia was brought forward specifically to cheer us all up, and it certainly worked for me, anyway. Zosia got Matteo to ask Ollie if he (Matteo) could ask her (Zosia) out, just to make him (Ollie) jealous. It worked a treat, because Ollie has been all prickly and defensive since Matteo arrived, what with his horse riding skills, the whole Italian thing and the fact that he can (allegedly) dance merengue and salsa, speak five languages and play the cello. Good lord, when does the man find the time to keep his beard nicely trimmed? I’m enjoying how Christian Vit seems to relish every second of playing Matteo, thoroughly playing up to all the stereotypes as he does so. It’s going to be interesting to see what kind of man Matteo is under that layer.