tlc
Dr Fintan Coyle was a doctor who'd had to retire from active practice because of a chronic back injury. So he sat around, created the format for the BBC's "The Weakest Link" and wrote a pilot script for "tlc" (at that point, called "Trust"). We did a readthrough in front of the then controller of BBC Two, Jane Root (and thereby inadvertently subjecting her to a stream of Richard Griffiths' most gloriously off-colour anecdotes), and we got greenlit for a series of six.
The location was a semi-disused hospital in Bow, a very rough part of London. It was perfectly normal, between takes, for the cast to be accosted by confused patients clutching samples and asking them things like "Where's Urology mate?"... After a while, Reece (Shearsmith) & Xander (Armstrong) started telling them the answers.
The series transmitted in November/December 2002 on BBC Two
Here's part of the original blurb:
tlc is a story about one man's journey into hell.
That man is Junior Doctor Flynn.
That hell is an NHS hospital
The time is now.
tlc
tender loving care
tlc is set in a large modern urban NHS hospital. Somewhere. It doesn't matter where, because, like Doctor Flynn, you'll never see the outside world.
tlc is a jet black comedy on the state of modern medicine and the NHS.
tlc is about 24-hour shifts that grow into 48 and 72-hour shifts.
tlc is shot on location, mostly handheld, to enhance the feelings of enclosure and surreality.
tlc is not a sitcom set in the cosy world of doctors, nurses and patients demanding bedpans. It's about breakdown and failure, perpetual night and lack of sleep, Catholic guilt and cigarettes.
Why does the chaplain always carry a rib spreader?
Why is there a crocodile in the ward bath?
Is that Jesus over there in a white coat?
and how do you score a gram of coffee round here?
Perhaps it's time to meet the firm...
Flynn is the new intern in a General Surgery firm. He is young, hopeful, innocent, eager to learn. He doesn't know it yet, but he's also never going to sleep again. He is Catholic, comes from a family of doctors and has always had a vocation. Now, he's beginning to doubt his faith in God and in medicine. Flynn is also incredibly accident-prone, and frankly, cack-handed. In a world of surgical precision, this could be a disadvantage. He is also sexually immature, and bedazzled by the perpetual allure of the nursing team, especially Nurse Judy, who sends him into spasms of self-denying frustration.
Flynn is played by Reece Shearsmith
Noble is the Registrar on Flynn's firm and thus one level senior to Flynn. He's halfway to total cynicism, and all-knowing in the ways of the hospital, sexually "busy" and the man who's job it is to initiate Flynn into the nightmare. He's also a stylish and experienced doctor. Noble can reset a dislocated shoulder with a flick of the wrist, a sprained wrist with a flick of the shoulder and a broken ECG machine with a swift application of the defibrillators. Noble doesn't believe in God, and regards sex as a necessary and normal consequence of playing Doctors and Nurses. He can't understand Flynn's scruples, but he is kindly towards him.
Noble is played by Alexander Armstrong
Mr. Ron is the Consultant. Utterly mercenary, utterly grandiose, utterly useless. He can never remember any of the patient's names, and expects people to cluster around him supplying him instantly with facts, diagnoses, pens - and patient's names. Inasmuch as he recognizes Junior Doctors at all, he dimly perceives that Flynn is probably useless. Conversely, the rest of the firm think he's a twat. They're right. So do all the patients. They're also right.
Mr. Ron is played by Richard Griffiths
Sister Hope is the Ward Sister. Second generation Afro-Caribbean. She runs her ward like a big nursery and treats the doctors as slightly tiresome over-anxious parents. If she's on nights, she's quite likely to tie patients up in order to get a good night's sleep and thinks that pain relief is only for big babies. She runs a constant war of attrition with Noble and Flynn, not least by waking them up in the middle of the night for the most trivial things she can think of. She is deeply religious in a Baptist sort of way, and thinks that Catholics are weird.
Sister Hope is played by Llewella Gideon
Staff Nurse Judy is the highly competent linchpin of the firm. She knows her arse from her elbow. Flynn's never met such cool competence before. Judy knows that Flynn dotes on her - all Junior Doctors do. She's just not interested in sex, and if she was, it wouldn't be with hapless schoolboys like Flynn.
Staff Nurse Judy is played by Georgia Mackenzie
As for Sid, the Chaplain, Gasman, Wheelchair Man, Terry and The Linen Lady - well, you'll meet them soon enough.
tlc
Pilot Readthrough
Performance on 9/2/01
This was a conflation of what was to become Script 1 & 2, adapted for reading “round a table” in front of the Controller of BBC2, Jane Root.
Starring | |
Dr. Flynn | Reece Shearsmith |
Dr. Noble | Simon Pegg |
Mr. Ron | Richard Griffiths |
Nurse Judy | Sarah Parish |
Sister Hope | Sharon D. Clarke |
Sid the Porter | David Battley |
Terry | Robert Webb |
The Gasman | Kerry Shale |
The Chaplain | Brian Cant |
The Linen Lady | Eleanor Bron |
The Wheelchair Man | Steve Frost |
Mrs. Kane | Julia Hills |
Dr. Galton | Ewen Cummins |
Father Kerrigan | Kevin Moore |
Written by | Fintan Coyle |
Directed by | Geoff Posner |
Produced by | Geoff Posner |
David Tyler |
Series 1
Show 1
First Tx 11/11/02 21.30-22.00 BBC 2
In this first episode, Dr. Flynn has just qualified as a doctor and is plunged into his first shift at the dreaded South Middlesex Hospital. He'll meet a talking corpse, a mad German anaesthetist and a drugs bust, but will he ever see daylight again? Only Dr. Noble can help him…
Starring | |
Dr. Flynn | Reece Shearsmith |
Dr. Noble | Alexander Armstrong |
Mr. Ron | Richard Griffiths |
Nurse Judy | Georgia Mackenzie |
Sister Hope | Llewella Gideon |
Sid the Porter | Tom Watts |
Terry | Benedict Wong |
The Gasman | Erich Redman |
The Chaplain | Tim Brooke-Taylor |
The Wheelchair Man | Martin Trenaman |
Also starring | |
Mr. Copperfield | Pip Torrens |
The Examiner | David Savile |
IVF Doctor | Pooja Kumar |
IVF Patient | Ann Wenn |
Woman In Labour | Gael Johnson |
Dad-To-Be | Simon Thomson |
Coma Patient | Jimmy Roussounis |
Coma Anaesthetist | Timothy Mitchell |
Junior Doctors | Paul Kemp |
Shereen Ibrahim | |
Laurence Howarth | |
Cleaner | Andrea Hall |
Old Lady In Wheelchair | Susan Scott |
Mrs Copperfield | Charlotte McDougall |
Obstetrician | Aileen Gonsalves |
Medical Students | Chris Geere |
Naomi Taylor | |
San Shella | |
Written by | Fintan Coyle |
Show 2
First Tx 18/11/02 21.30-22.00 BBC 2
Junior Dr. Flynn is about to meet a 83 year old patient with a difference, a vampire on the loose, a toffee in a belly-button, a nasty photocopier incident and some anthrax. Meanwhile, he's beginning to fall for Staff Nurse Judy and accidentally gets sectioned under the Mental Health Act…
Starring | |
Dr. Flynn | Reece Shearsmith |
Dr. Noble | Alexander Armstrong |
Mr. Ron | Richard Griffiths |
Nurse Judy | Georgia Mackenzie |
Sister Hope | Llewella Gideon |
Sid the Porter | Tom Watts |
Terry | Benedict Wong |
The Gasman | Erich Redman |
The Chaplain | Tim Brooke-Taylor |
The Wheelchair Man | Martin Trenaman |
Also starring | |
Mrs Price | Peggy Shields |
Sperm Donation Nurse | Sue Elliott-Nicholls |
The Linen Lady | Mia Soteriou |
Father Kerrigan | John O'Mahony |
Chef | Paul Putner |
Midwife | Abi Eniola |
Woman Giving Birth | Johanne Murdock |
Exterminators | John Rapley |
Godfrey Jackman | |
Dr Galton | Nicholas Monu |
Written by | Fintan Coyle |
Show 3
First Tx 25/11/02 21.30-22.00 BBC 2
Junior Dr. Flynn is on a mission of the utmost medical emergency - to try and get a clean white coat before the next Ward Round with the consultant, Mr. Ron. The only things stopping him are a rat, the Pet Shop Boys and the spleen of the local priest.
Starring | |
Dr. Flynn | Reece Shearsmith |
Dr. Noble | Alexander Armstrong |
Mr. Ron | Richard Griffiths |
Nurse Judy | Georgia Mackenzie |
Sister Hope | Llewella Gideon |
Sid the Porter | Tom Watts |
Terry | Benedict Wong |
The Gasman | Erich Redman |
The Chaplain | Tim Brooke-Taylor |
The Wheelchair Man | Martin Trenaman |
Also starring | |
Photocopier Patient | Renee Nyland |
Ethel | Edna Dore |
The Psychiatrist | Joan Oliver |
Mr Holland | David McKail |
Written by | Fintan Coyle |
Show 4
First Tx 2/12/02 21.30-22.00 BBC 2
The South Middlesex Hospital has lost all three of its NHS Ratings stars and it's Dr. Flynn and Dr. Noble's job to get them back. Which they do with the help of some X-Ray Specs, two jars of maggots and a lot of blood. Really a lot.
Starring | |
Dr. Flynn | Reece Shearsmith |
Dr. Noble | Alexander Armstrong |
Mr. Ron | Richard Griffiths |
Nurse Judy | Georgia Mackenzie |
Sister Hope | Llewella Gideon |
Sid the Porter | Tom Watts |
Terry | Benedict Wong |
The Gasman | Erich Redman |
The Chaplain | Tim Brooke-Taylor |
The Wheelchair Man | Martin Trenaman |
Also starring | |
Pathologist | Richard Freeman |
DI Crighton | David Cann |
Police Constable | Roger Morlidge |
Chiropodist | Vicki Pepperdine |
Chiropody Patient | Hilary Sesta |
Frank Briggs | Frank Harper |
Minder | Jay Kilbey |
"Bad News" Mother | Lorraine Hilton |
"Bad News" Father | Will Ashcroft |
Written by | Fintan Coyle |
Show 5
First Tx 9/12/02 21.30-22.00 BBC 2
The South Middlesex Hospital has lost all three of its NHS Ratings stars and it's Dr. Flynn and Dr. Noble's job to get them back. Which they do with the help of some X-Ray Specs, two jars of maggots and a lot of blood. Really a lot.
Starring | |
Dr. Flynn | Reece Shearsmith |
Dr. Noble | Alexander Armstrong |
Mr. Ron | Richard Griffiths |
Nurse Judy | Georgia Mackenzie |
Sister Hope | Llewella Gideon |
Sid the Porter | Tom Watts |
Terry | Benedict Wong |
The Gasman | Erich Redman |
The Chaplain | Tim Brooke-Taylor |
The Wheelchair Man | Martin Trenaman |
Also starring | |
Mrs Howard | Marsha Millar |
Midwife | Sue Elliott-Nicholls |
Patients In Corridor | Steve Varnom |
Jean Trend | |
Nicholas Amer | |
Mrs Stanley | Julie Foulds |
Chef | Paul Putner |
ICU Cleaner | Connie M'Gadzah |
Written by | Fintan Coyle |
Show 6
First Tx 16/12/02 21.30-22.00 BBC 2
In the last episode of the series, the arrival of a young agency nurse from Spain puts an interesting twist on Nurse Judy's feelings for Dr. Flynn. We must warn viewers that this episode contains scooters, chocolate, a dead head in the fridge, The Weakest Link, anal warts and a pizza called the Abattoir Meat Feast.
Starring | |
Dr. Flynn | Reece Shearsmith |
Dr. Noble | Alexander Armstrong |
Mr. Ron | Richard Griffiths |
Nurse Judy | Georgia Mackenzie |
Sister Hope | Llewella Gideon |
Sid the Porter | Tom Watts |
The Gasman | Erich Redman |
The Chaplain | Tim Brooke-Taylor |
The Wheelchair Man | Martin Trenaman |
Also starring | |
The Phlebotomist | Adrian Scarborough |
1950s Patient | David Mitchell |
1960s Patient | Simon Godley |
1970s Patient | Trevor Georges |
1990s Patient | Jane Partridge |
Mr Gray | Hugh Sachs |
Mr Piper | Christopher Beck |
Chef | Paul Putner |
Juanita | Rebecca Santos |
Mr Clifford | Frank Coda |
Mr Renshaw | Peter Waddington |
Gasman's Patient | Flaminia Cinque |
Audiologist | Racheal Joseph |
Written by | Fintan Coyle |
Casting | |
Directed by | Geoff Posner |
Produced by | Geoff Posner |
David Tyler |
tlc
See all the characters in the photo gallery...
Watch the behind-the-scenes "Making Of tlc" video. Never-been-seen before medical tomfoolery...
You can buy the DVD by clicking here
You can click here to go to the BBC website to read more about the show and watch a clip
And normally, we don't link to YouTube, but we couldn't resist this one - for some reason, someone has translated the titles into German and put them on YouTube here. We think it means something like "Dr. Flynn - survival is a matter of luck."
Take it further ...
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