I am sooo looking forward to watching the new Channel Seven series "Last Chance Surgery". Former AMA president Professor Kerryn Phelps and neurosurgeon Charlie Teo will bring us heart-rending cases of children with brain tumours, surely a huge ratings winner.
It is such an original idea, I don't know why I didn't think of it. For some reason, my own pitches for medical-themed TV series have always been rejected by the TV networks.
My idea for a "Medicare CSI", for example, in which a team of forensic experts from a government agency investigate the circumstances behind mysterious and unusual billing patterns and other over-servicing crimes by doctors. They didn't want to know!
Then there was my idea for a quiz show aimed at health professionals - "Are you smarter than a doctor?" in which Rove McManus encourages nurses and pharmacists to try and address complex medical problems in front of an invited audience of plaintiff lawyers. Or what about a show that pits ordinary Australian doctors against an insidious 'banker', who tries to tempt them to sell their practices for instant cash? Deal or No Deal?
They say comedy-drama is the most difficult kind of TV show to write, but I found it quite easy when I shifted the setting of "Packed to the Rafters" to an emergency department. With the opening of a new superclinic, the ED staff think they're finally going to have the place to themselves - but their department becomes a welcome refuge for many old faces when unforeseen problems loom. Great for the ratings - hospital performance ratings, I mean.
Well I didn't have any luck with the commercial networks, but the ABC is looking favourably on my idea for "Antique Hospital Roadshow". It's a simple format. A health minister and some 'experts' tour the country, visiting hospitals and clinics and talking to the local people about their quaint X-ray machines, and asking them how much they paid for their test tubes.
Sometimes the unsuspecting locals are told their hospitals will get a windfall of millions of dollars, but sometimes they find they only have sentimental value.
Comments
Perhaps a British style comedy series at Royal North Shore Hospital "Carry on Dying.." Posted by sf on Wednesday, 2 September 2009
