I Won't Be Making Another Appointment

Posted on: Friday, 18 July 2008, 09:01 CDT By Robert Hanks Last Night's TV HARLEY STREET ITV1 THE UNSEEN ALISTAIR COOKE BBC4 The arrival on our screens of Harley Street, a drama set in the world of private medicine, seems like some sort of watershed. But what sort? Is it evidence of the growing acceptability of private medicine, that popular faith in publicly funded medicine is no longer a given? Or is it simply that TV has been so saturated with NHS-based medical dramas that private is the only route left? Probably the second of those, since the whole programme is desperate to hedge its bets, on the one hand trying to sex things up with gloss, glamour and greed, on the other reassuring us every few minutes that it's all about helping people. The series opened with our hero, Dr Robert Fielding (Paul Nicholls), bustling... [read full story]