Observational documentaries about the emergency services can make great television ?�but does Channel 4 really need quite so many of them?
You have to hand it to Channel 4 ? when it finds something popular, it'll ride the wave until everybody ends up hating it. That's what it did with Big Brother. That's what it did with property shows. That's what it even did, briefly, with Justin Lee Collins. And now it's what it seems to be doing with emergency services documentaries.
First there was One Born Every Minute. Then there was Coppers. Next came 24 Hours in A&E. And now, to add to this list, there's Party Paramedics and, to a lesser extent, More4's Confessions of a Nurse. All these shows follow a basic formula: the harried men and women of the NHS and police do their best to provide a world class service in the face of pressure, exhaustion and members of the public who seem determined to harass and abuse them at every turn. Viewers invariably come away from them with a greater understanding and respect for these professionals. But how many documentaries is too many?
Coppers, One Born Every Minute and 24 Hours in A&E are extremely watchable ? the latter being one of the best shows of last year. Every episode managed to brilliantly encapsulate the mixture of tedium, comedy and high drama of an A&E ward; patients and doctors alike could identify with it. It was endlessly touching, and could pull off pointed social commentary when the mood took it. As can Coppers, which also benefits from a constantly shifting focus from day to day.
One Born Every Minute, which began a new series this week, is slightly different. People tune in because they enjoy watching through their fingers as one hapless father-to-be after another infuriates their partner by bursting into tears or gooning around with inflated surgical gloves. For that aspect alone, it is peerless.
It's easy to see why these programmes are popular. They're serious observational documentaries rather than the usual tinny factual entertainment shows that tend to clog up schedules. They have a point, and they make it well. We might tune in because we'll invariably see a boozy clown bonk himself on the head and then throw up on himself at some point, but we stick around because seeing these public servants under duress and stretched to capacity and still managing to work miracles is nothing short of amazing.
What does Party Paramedics add to this? Not a lot, to be honest. Aside from the fact that the show's subjects are St John's Ambulance volunteers working in a modified bus, rather than NHS professionals working in a hospital, the bulk of its main points are ably covered by its sister shows. 24 Hours in A&E already does a fine line in demonstrating how hard-working and put-upon medical professionals are, while One Born Every Minute already has the "God, the public are terrible" angle sewn up. The rest of the show is basically an elongated montage of people falling over outside Yates's and getting their knickers out. It's nothing we haven't already seen a million times before on Boozed Up Brits Abroad and any number of po-faced investigative documentaries about the perils of binge-drinking.
Taken on its own, Party Paramedics would be a worthwhile show. More than worthwhile, even. It'd be brilliant. Colchester's SOS bus and its cheerily bewildered clutch of volunteers is a fantastic subject for a documentary series. If this week's opening episode was any indication, it might get a little bit samey after a while ? here's a drunk bloke who's been bottled, here's a drunk girl who banged her head on the pavement ? but it's a great premise.
The problem is, though, you can't take Party Paramedics on its own, because of its obvious similarities to all the other shows, from the choice of camera angle, to the soundtrack, to the characters involved. It's even scheduled alongside Coppers in a full two-hour double-bill of weary professionals rolling their eyes at morons. When the characteristics of a genre become as stock as any reality show, perhaps it's time to think about scaling back. The last thing Channel 4 needs to do is turn a brace of brilliant shows into Justin Lee Collins.
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