Review of The Delivery Man

"The delivery man" arrives via "Airplane!" and "Green Wing" and is quite unembarrassed in showing it's origins at frequent intervals. You have the bald guy(the excellent Mr A.Macqueen,brilliant as the acerbic anaesthetist in "Holby City) leaping into the frame and making non - sequiturs a la Stephen Stocker in the American comedy and the downright larceny and pulverisation of many a British hospital soap en route to "Green Wing"'s jerky movements and eccentric music score. Miss F.Ripley's character borrows heavily from Miss S.Lopez's performance - or at least the script gives her virtually the same ground to cover i.e.a hopeless lust for the handsome young medic . The sublime Mr Darren Boyd plays the new midwife,recently resigned from the police,who faces prejudice both from his patients and his colleagues and deals with it pragmatically and amusingly. The fact that he was in "Green Wing" acts to cement the two programmes even closer together. Now there is nothing wrong with "hommage" - many of the finest talents in TV and movies use it freely - but there comes a stage where it creeps over to plagiarism and some of "The delivery man" reaches quite close to the limit as far as that is concerned. But,as you might think considering it's origins,it is very funny,quite sharp and the lead character has an appealing vulnerability under his somewhat imperturbable exterior that makes him extremely likable. I have enjoyed this series so far,but I feel that if it is to keep my attention it really should wrench itself away from what has been done before rather better and try to give us something a little fresher.