Dvd Review

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday February 16, 2008

Sacha Molitorisz

Green Wing

Hopscotch

Rated MA

Martin Dear wants to be a doctor but there are obstacles in his path. One is that he can't seem to pass those pesky exams. Another is his overwhelming lack of self-belief. A third is his signature, which features a smiley face. As a superior says, "You can't really do smiley faces on death certificates."

A hit from Britain, Green Wing is like The Office meets Scrubs - only more surreal, perverse and sexual. From the team behind Smack The Pony, it's a hospital comedy with characters who act as if they've been surreptitiously imbibing prescription pharmaceuticals. Dr Caroline Todd (Tamsin Greig from Black Books, pictured with Stephen Mangan) is neurotic, single and depressed; Dr Guy Secretan is a sadistic womaniser; and Dr Alan Stathan (Mark Heap from Big Train) is a socially incompetent sex maniac who loves to be abused by self-obsessed chain-smoker Joanna Clore from HR. The cast is excellent and you get the sense a lot of the best moments are improvised.

Also impressive are the slick, inventive visuals. Accompanied by jaunty theme music, the action sometimes accelerates into fast-motion or slows to a crawl. It's a fresh approach in a medium where derivation is the norm. Indeed, any one of these nine one-hour episodes has more witty ideas than a whole season of most comedy series.

Season one culminates in an amusing twist on the notion of a cliffhanger. Long before then you'll probably agree that never before has bad medicine been so good.