One dark and miserable rainy evening in December 2000, my very own ‘annus horribilis’, I stood at a bus stop in Isleworth. My second bus of the evening hadn’t shown, rounding off another bad day. I’d been commuting across the forgotten outer suburbs of west London for the past two weeks to a terrible temp job, doing data entry for a well-known national broadcasting company (Google it if you like, but it rhymes with ‘pie’) where nobody spoke to me all day and I felt like I was invisible. Thankfully it was my last day there. Being near to Christmas, the temp agency hadn’t lined anything else up, and I was so fed up I was contemplating heading back up north permanently. My dream of making it in London had largely disintegrated, I had no money and no prospects. I was due to leave for Christmas at my mum’s anyway in a few days, so why not just stay?
A bus finally turned up, and as it meandered up through Brentford (my London experience was hardly cinematic, you didn’t see Richard Curtis setting films in my neck of the woods) I got a call on my mobile (a pay as you go Nokia 3210, obviously, this being 2000). It was my temp agency rep Topaz. She told me that they urgently needed someone for another data entry job tomorrow, and asked could I step in last minute. It was only for a week, just until Christmas. I said yes as my rent was due, and it was walking distance from my shared house. It was a week tops, what harm could it do? The next day I walked into my local district general hospital, and so began my NHS career of over 20 years.
I quickly realised that I was going to enjoy working in a hospital. Every day was different, there was so much to see and experience, bizarre sights and sounds, life and death. The role itself was in the Human Resources team, and from day one I absolutely loved it. I adored my colleagues, a disparate but fascinating bunch of personalities, each with their own unique quirk. So I fitted in, and they made me feel incredibly welcome and I finally found what I’d been looking for – a home. Working there was a unique and life-changing experience for me.
Many films and television shows have been set in hospitals, usually capturing the everyday drama of life on the frontline of healthcare. Yet as impressive as these have been, nothing ever really captured the unique spirit of working in a local hospital until the Channel 4 comedy series Green Wing came along.
Green Wing ran for just two series and a couple of specials between 2004 and 2006/7. Set in the fictional confines of East Hampton Hospital, the sitcom had a rather surreal take on life in the NHS. It was made by the team behind the brilliant sketch show Smack the Pony, and devised, developed, and produced by Victoria Pile. Pile also wrote the show along with a team of eight, unusual for a British sitcom.
Like many medical shows, it centred on the experience of a new recruit as they meet their new colleagues and get to grips with the place. In Green Wing, that new arrival is Dr Caroline Todd (Tamsin Greig). She works closely with two other doctors, an arrogant anaesthetist and self-declared God’s gift to women Guy Secretan (Stephen Mangan), and the gentler, popular surgeon “Mac” Macartney, played by Julian Rhind-Tutt. There is also the lovable loser, junior doctor Martin Dear (Karl Theobald) who is subjected to continuous teasing by his colleagues.
The wider cast includes the always brilliant Mark Heap as eccentric consultant radiologist Alan Statham and the equally always brilliant Michelle Gomez as description-defying staff liaison officer Sue White, possibly one of the greatest comedy characters of this century. There is also focus on the Human Resources department, headed up by sexually charged HR Director Joanna Clore (Pippa Haywood).
Green Wing was creative in its approach. The writing and performances were incredibly sharp. It had a strong sense of the ensemble, with a palpable feeling of camaraderie and respect between the cast. The staging and production of the show felt innovative in its use of music, camera techniques and physical movement by the actors. There were longer running themes and storylines, mixed with sketch-like scenes, and unexplained surrealist motifs and moments, such as a camel being walked through the corridors, and Sue White’s bizarre office antics.
The show was crazy, weird and incredibly funny, but it was also warm and touching at times, with depth to the characters and a real respect for its NHS setting. That’s what was so captivating about Green Wing for me when I saw it, that mixture of the surreal and the real, and I saw my own experience.
Life in an NHS hospital is so different to any other workplace, and so hard to quantify. All life is present, and every day brings something new to the mix. But those friendships forged with colleagues working in the close confines of a busy and challenging environment and the surrealness it creates, that shapes you. Even though it’s just a silly sitcom, Green Wing somehow captured the atmosphere, the little details and that distinctive feeling. Obviously, I never actually saw a camel in the corridor, but it always felt like I could turn a corner and see one at any moment and it would feel perfectly normal. Just another day in the hospital.
The Rest is Propaganda 