‘St. Denis Medical' review: You might find it fresh and funny if you've spent 25 years without watching any television

Irish Independent

a day ago

The first time he does it, it gets a laugh. If he does the same thing again, it also gets a laugh, but not as big a laugh as before. If he does it a third time, the laugh is even smaller still because the audience can see it coming. It's the law of diminishing returns in action.
But imagine if, on the third occasion, he spots the manhole and avoids it – only to be struck by someone swinging a ladder that knocks him into the hole again. That gets the biggest laugh of all.
The mockumentary format, which displaced sitcoms as the dominant form of TV comedy, is also offering diminishing returns. It's like the man who falls into a manhole, only this time he keeps on doing it again and again, to the point where nobody is laughing anymore.
The flood of mockumentary comedies over the last two decades or so means the concept has been flogged to death several times over.
They passed their sell-by date a long time ago, yet television will insist on churning them out anyway. The latest is American series St. Denis Medical (BBC1, Friday, June 6, 10.40pm), showing in weekly double bills.
It's anything but terrible. Put it this way, there have been plenty of far worse mockumentaries (the pointless and barely credible Family Tree with Chris O'Dowd, for one).
It's performed with enthusiasm by a talented and appealing cast. You might even find it fresh and funny, provided you've spent 25 years without watching any television.
It's another workplace comedy, and every workplace comedy since the BBC's The Office in 2001 has been a variation on... The Office. But St Denis Medical imitates the formula more rigidly than most, which makes it a particularly unnecessary addition.
The quirky characters feel less like original creations in their own right than archetypes assembled from other characters in other mockumentaries.
The workplace here is a mid-size hospital in Oregon. It's what's called in America a 'safety net hospital', meaning it's obliged to treat everyone, whether or not they have medical insurance.
Consequently, it's overrun with patients, understaffed and in a permanent state of chaos. The only credible character is dedicated supervising nurse Alex, played by the wonderful Allison Tolman, a workaholic whose habit of staying long after her shift is over plays havoc with her family life.
Alex fears that if she's not there, the hospital might fall apart. She might be right.
The hospital's administrator is Joyce (Wendi McLendon-Covey), who blows most of the budget on a fancy new mammogram machine and suggests the hospital should have a slogan: 'The best breast test in the West.' Meanwhile, her staff are wrestling with an ancient computer system that's no longer fit for purpose.
Joyce is basically a female David Brent or Michael Scott. She bustles around the place, trying to perk up the staff and only succeeds in getting on their nerves and embarrassing them.
She even does a very Brent-like motivational dance and treats them to an excruciating performance on the marimba.
Having one Brent/Scott clone is lazy enough, but St Denis Medical has a second: full-of-himself trauma surgeon Bruce (Josh Lawson), who keeps a guitar and samurai swords in his office. He too has a trademark dance he does before operations.
Bruce is a constant irritation to world-weary veteran doctor Ron (David Alan Grier), who's seen it all before. But Ron is often as vain as Bruce and prides himself on dating much younger women.
There's also a clueless new nurse called Matt (Mekki Leeper), who grew up in a religious community that doesn't believe in medication.
On his first day, he accidentally injects himself with an EpiPen. The rest of the characters, including a very Stanley-from-The Office type nursing administrator, are sketchily drawn.
Now and again, St Denis Medical shows flashes of what it could have been were it not a timid NBC network series.
We briefly see a racist patient complaining about black doctors, but the curtain is swiftly closed on him, as it is on every opportunity to have a pop at America's brutal, broken healthcare system.
Rating: Two stars