Ambulance
Domino Day
This is what Vicky McClure’s explosive bomb squad drama Trigger Point must be like in real life. A suspect device has been reported near Oldham shopping centre and the emergency services swoop in.
A senior paramedic is ‘acting bronze commander’, with police, fire and medical crews on standby beyond a cordon of 100 metres around the hastily evacuated area. Early reports suggest this is an improvised explosive device (IED), weighing at least 2lb and the size of a rolling pin, with wires trailing out of it.
By now, viewers of the Manchester 999 documentary Ambulance (BBC1) will be imagining a terrorist weapon such as a miniature Tomahawk missile. A photo is passed round, and one sceptic remarks that the IED looks more like a large firework. This is a visual illusion. It’s a very small and ordinary firework.
No one acknowledges what a self-inflicted farce this is. ‘Sometimes, the general public see this as us doing a lot of standing around,’ declared one of the ambulance men, ‘but we’re keeping an awful lot of people safe.’
Ambulance on BBC1 is what Vicky McClure’s explosive bomb squad drama Trigger Point must be like in real life
If North West Ambulance Service didn’t regard dead people as emergencies, the living wouldn’t have to wait nine hours
Domino Day on BBC3 is really a teen drama, with adult actors. It is, nevertheless, quite fun
No doubt they were following approved procedure, but the only things they were keeping safe were their own jobs. There had been no explosion, no one was hurt and there was absolutely no reason for ambulances to be standing idle.
Meanwhile, across the city, emergency calls were coming in at a rate of one every 20 seconds, we were told, and waiting times for ambulances could be longer than the average working day.
One call handler snapped at a desperate patient on the phone: ‘You were told when you called that we do have long delays at the moment, over nine hours. I can see you’ve been waiting . . . one hour 37 minutes.’ He sounded like a waiter scolding a customer who was in a hurry for dessert.
Next time we saw the ‘acting bronze commander’, he was on his way to a care home after a resident was found on the floor without a pulse, not breathing and cold. You don’t require a nursing degree to know that the poor bloke needed an undertaker, not a paramedic.
Maybe, and this is only a suggestion, but if North West Ambulance Service didn’t regard dead people as emergencies, the living wouldn’t have to wait nine hours.
The final few minutes of the episode were a montage of clips, with a gospel singer belting out Fatboy Slim’s anthem: ‘I have to praise you like I should.’
Of course you should. Anything else would be heresy, and any criticism of ‘our wonderful NHS’ is unforgivable. This show wouldn’t dream of it — many of the clips seem chosen because the patients are so gushing and grateful. Hardly surprising… they’ve probably been waiting since yesterday breakfast-time.
Across the city, a coven of irritable Manchester witches were spying on a newcomer in the supernatural romance Domino Day (BBC3). Siena Kelly plays Domino, a coffee shop barista whose superpower is using her mind to draw bees and skulls in the foam of cappuccinos. To recharge her batteries, she dates ghastly, arrogant men and then sucks the life force out of them with a kiss — just enough to leave them with a hangover.
Then, she wipes their memories. It’s like Harry Potter with snogging. Domino hopes that if she falls in love, she will be able to control her vampiric tendencies. A night out at a bowling alley with a hunky barman starts well, but she ends up having to give him a brainwipe.
‘You will remember we had the best date — we had milkshakes!’ she tells his unconscious body sadly. Meanwhile, the other witches are arguing over whether to let her be their friend.
Really, it’s a teen drama, with adult actors. Quite fun, though.
