After this morning’s discussion about the impending move of Holby’s Casualty department to Cardiff Bay, it reminded me that last Saturday’s episode was the sort of episode I really wanted to shout to the world about (if you follow me on Twitter you may well have heard me do so while the episode was airing).
As I said in the weekend Square Eyes preview, it’s the kind of episode that Casualty does every so often — something that sidesteps the usual formula and gives us something unexpected and emotional.
A perfect example of this was Barbara Machin’s Christmas 2006 episode, whose non-linear approach helped the series gain its first ever BAFTA for Best Continuing Drama. Ever since then, the almost annual appearance of a high concept episode has always led me to believe that there is some intent to submit that episode for the Academy’s consideration.
It’s not quite blatant enough for the dialogue to consist of nothing but “Gritty BAFTA”, but it’s close.
Gillian Kearney excelled, as Jessica relived moments from her past while, in the present, she was prepped for surgery to relieve the hydrocephalus that risked killing her.
The surreal sight of a blue, soaking wet woman walking through her own memories, water rising up through the floor would, on its own, have been an intriguing sight. What really made the episode stand out, though, were some beautifully shot underwater sequences set in the icy lake where she first slipped into her coma, and she and her new husband lost their young baby, Harry.
The sight of an unconscious Jessica slowly letting go of her son, for him to fall into the black depths below was chilling to watch. But nothing can compare to the very last shot of the episode, as those scenes ceased any pretence of being a flashback, and the haunted Jessica, finally awake in the present, reached out for her lost son.
Mark Catley’s script at times felt hampered by the need to return to the 2010 Emergency Department, for that was when it was at its weakest. But during the flashbacks and underwater sequences, it was a truly remarkable piece of television.
Leave Me Alone is available on iPlayer for a few more days. If you didn’t catch it on Saturday, then you must. I fear that when the next episode rolls around on Saturday, Casualty will return, as the coach to a pumpkin, to the standard fare for another year.
