The Heights
24 Hours In A&E
Rating: 
Hard to imagine, but Aussie soaps were once so popular over here that the Beeb used to broadcast the same Neighbours episode twice a day. And you weren’t a proper fan unless you watched them both.
That was before Charlene turned into a pop star named Kylie Minogue, before Harold Bishop disappeared, back when Mrs Mangel kept her beady eye on Ramsay Street from behind net curtains.
But by the end of the Eighties, the obsession was over. The last thing I remember, doctor, is Kylie’s wedding to Jason Donovan, playing Scott. After that, the show seemed to lose its sheen.
Now it seems reborn, grittier and edgier, set in a tower block in Perth, Western Australia, where residents are beset by unemployment and drug problems. The Heights (BBC1) is an afternoon Neighbours for the 21st century.
Now it seems reborn, grittier and edgier, set in a tower block in Perth, Western Australia, where residents are beset by unemployment and drug problems. The Heights (BBC1) is an afternoon Neighbours for the 21st century
Characters still take their positions at the start of a scene and stay rigidly planted, for fear of knocking over the scenery. They address each other by name and relationship: ‘Shannon, you’re my daughter. Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?’
‘Mum, the last thing you said to me was you never wanted to see me again!’
‘Once, Shannon! I said it once, in an argument!’
Such deathless dialogue is delivered as only an Aussie can — either deadpan, or wrung out with despair and disbelief.
Mum (pictured)and Shannon (Fiona Press and Briallen Clarke) had no time to resolve their misunderstanding
Mum and Shannon (Fiona Press and Briallen Clarke) had no time to resolve their misunderstanding, because no sooner had the camera cut from one distraught face to the other, than we were in the corner shop where ex-cop Pav (Marcus Graham) buys sheaves of Rizlas for rolling his joints.
Pav smokes dope to ease the pain of injuries he sustained as a crimefighter. We haven’t been told what happened, but his face looks as though a violent criminal injected him with a Botox overdose.
Meanwhile, Pav’s teenage son Mich (Calen Tassone) fancies Sabine (Bridie McKim), the new girl at school. She’s already got a boyfriend, but that’s the least of their problems — they appear to be about 25 years old, and Mich is still in short trousers.
Meanwhile, Pav’s teenage son Mich (Calen Tassone) (boy pictured) fancies Sabine (Bridie McKim) (girl pictured), the new girl at school
Don’t stop to worry about that, because Shannon’s brother has returned after 13 years away, just to discover that he, Mum and Sis have inherited Grandad’s pub. It’s all too much for Shannon — she abandoned her baby in the vegetable garden.
Now everyone calls the poor mite Patch … Cabbage Patch.
All that, just in the first two half-hour episodes. There’s 28 more to come: Auntie had better start showing teatime repeats, or we’re never going to keep up.
A real-life soap opera is the aim of 24 Hours In A&E (C4), which returned as two motorcyclists were airlifted to St George’s Hospital in London after road accidents.
Leon, aged 17, insisted to his mother that ‘it’s just a little graze’, though he’d fractured his pelvis.
He was soon on the mend, but new father Przemek, 35, wasn’t so fortunate.
From the moment he told medics that he had no sensation below his waist, his case looked bad and, in a downbeat coda, we learned he would never walk again.
The power of this long-running series lies not in the close-ups of open wounds and neck restraints, but in the emotional stories told by the patients’ families.
‘The world just ended,’ Przemek’s wife Tatia said, describing how police told her of the accident. ‘I wished I had kissed him one more time so he wouldn’t be there, in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
No histrionics, no hand-wringing, but the way she said it was heartbreaking.