182. "Lewis"

Oh, how I wish I were cool. (and you can tell that I'm uncool because I believe in the power of the subjunctive. Anyway.)

I was sitting on my tod last evening, the Hound and Herself being out, and I was flicking between 24 hours in A&E, and Lewis. 24 hours in A&E is a wonderful fly-on-the-wall documentary about King's College Hospital. Lewis is a slightly rubbish detective spin-off. I ended up sticking with Lewis.

But I'll tell you why. Because Doris, aged 92, had fallen out of bed and spent the night on the floor, because she couldn't get to the phone to summon help. She was still bright and alert, and she had a smile for all the doctors and nurses who were prodding her, even though she was clearly still a bit shocked and frightened. She was all alone. The lady consultant doctor (usually a fairly brutal breed, in my experience) was exquisitely gentle and non-patronising with Doris, as she tried to work out just how vulnerable Doris really was.
Doris had a broken hip, but she didn't moan or complain ONCE. Not like the young bloke in the bed next to hers, who'd twisted his knee. You'd think he'd impaled his scrotum on a giant metal spike, the amount of fuss he was making.

Only the fact that Doris occasionally gasped or seemed to struggle to catch her breath gave away the pain she was in. And, frankly, I wasn't woman enough to continue watching. Doris was lucky, in lots of ways, still to be living by herself at 92. And the lovely doctor was going to make sure she was OK. But it was too much. It made me too sad.

So I switched over to Lewis. Aaahhhhh. And, relax. There's old Whately, schlumping about, doing lots of eyebrow acting. There's Donkey-Angel Boy, looking ugly and gorgeous at PRECISELY the same time. There's Oxford. There's a cast of B-list English Ac-tors and a not-bad script by Alan Plater. Not real. Not hard to watch. Not likely to make me want to get on my bicycle at 10pm to find Doris and make her come and live in my basement.

So, yes, I'm the dummy. But sometimes I just CAN'T. And Lewis was created for those moments.