CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV: Simple cure for NHS woes? get rid of pompous men

Maternal

Classification: ****

Brain

Classification: **

Before, there was no better setting for television drama than a hospital. Doctors and nurses, romance in the ER, life and death decisions… it all adds up to the soap opera’s safest bet.

Now, the whole issue is riddled with controversies and politically correct pitfalls. Even Maternal (ITV)’s title, about three women returning to theaters after having children, risks angering the thought police.

‘Maternal’, as one speaker pointed out to Drs Helen, Maryam and Catherine (Lisa McGrillis, Parminder Nagra and Lara Pulver), is not a word on the approved list. They had been on ‘parental leave’, she emphasized, not ‘maternity’.

Using a pump to express her milk, as discreetly as she could in public, Helen complained that her “breasts” hurt.

Excuse me, doctor, but I think you’ll find the right gender-neutral terminology for that part of your anatomy which is ‘chest’.

Writer Jacqui Honess-Martin takes a boldly feminist tone. It’s clear that she knows how to fix the NHS: get rid of men. They are all incompetent, pompous, condescending, sexist, lazy, unreliable, lecherous. And those are the good ones.

Helen’s husband, Guy (Oliver Chris), a doctor on the same wards, accuses her of undermining his authority every time she speaks.

Maryam’s husband is outraged that she went back to work. Catherine is the sensible one: she is a defiant single mother, coping with life much better than her friends who have succumbed to marriage.

Writer Jacqui Honess-Martin takes a boldly feminist tone. It’s clear she knows how to fix the NHS – get rid of men

However, Catherine’s mother does not approve. She had to suffer the demands of a husband who believed he was God, and also her daughter: ‘You wanted to be a mother. Demand sacrifice!

For all its shrillness, Maternal is fast-paced, emotionally punchy and much easier to watch than BBC1’s self-pitying saga This Is Going To Hurt from last year.

There is real sharpness in the script. When a doctor volunteers for extra work, a consultant says, ‘My hero!

We will organize a round of applause.

Quizmaster Clive Myrie also has a tendency to slur by slurring the word “Ye-ee-ess”, when he could just shorten it.

That can fool players in vital fractions of a second. Clive, who replaced John Humphrys in 2021, seems to be turning Mastermind (BBC2) more and more into a game of chance and memory.

Of course, the stress of the occasion can make anyone nervous. Civil engineer Adeleine couldn’t remember the name of composer Scott Joplin, although she, she said, had been playing his Maple Leaf Rag on the piano for years.

‘That chair makes us all do funny things,’ Clive sympathized.

Clive, who replaced John Humphrys in 2021, seems to be turning Mastermind (BBC2) more and more into a game of chance and memory.

But the number of compressed questions in each round has begun to vary markedly. I kept count, and by my calculations Professor Lesley (who chose the life of Thomas Cromwell as her special subject) only got 29 riddles thrown at her. She finished last.

Optician Alex had more chances to answer, both in his specialist round (on Wes Anderson movies) and in his general knowledge quiz. In all, he was faced with 32 questions, which is ten percent more.

Both players responded quickly, but some of Alex’s questions seemed shorter, like ‘Funf is the German word for what number?’ (It’s five’.)

Instead, Lesley was faced with fakers like this one: “A decade after they broke up, what singing duo reunited for a free concert in New York’s Central Park in September 1981, which they are said to have attended? about half a million people? (That was ‘Simon and Garfunkel,’ which also takes a lot longer to say than ‘five.’)

As expected, Alex won the contest. It hardly seems fair, and it never would have happened under Magnus Magnusson.