A cracking episode from George Layton and Jonathan Lynn.
Duncan goes to Pentonville prison to collect a convicted burglar named Albert Melia ( Frank Jarvis ) who requires a gallstone operation at St. Swithins. En route to the theatre, the incompetent orderlies ( Derek Deadman and Reg Lye ) manage to lose him, and, thinking he might have escaped, the doctors frantically search for him. On top of that an annoying little man ( Larry Noble ) wants an operation even though there's nothing wrong with him, an Italian family ( all thirty of them ) with no command of English takes over Casualty, a Welshman called Mr.Spencer ( Tony Hughes ) in grave need of physiotherapy winds up in the operating theatre, a corpse is left unattended in a corridor, while the unconscious Mr.Melia is placed in the morgue...
This blackly comic script is packed with subplots - any one of which could have made for an adequate episode - which merge magnificently, and there's a nice twist before the end credits roll. Frank Jarvis is particularly good as the wily Melia. Alison King - who plays love-starved 'Nurse Sheila Reynolds' - looks like a female Marty Feldman and no, I do not mean that as an insult. Another nurse is played by the lovely Merdelle Jordine, who was in the children's sci-fi classic 'Timeslip'.
Funniest moment - Melia wakes up in the morgue. Thinking he is in a hospital ward, he starts idly chatting to the 'patients'. On finding them all dead, he panics!
Duncan goes to Pentonville prison to collect a convicted burglar named Albert Melia ( Frank Jarvis ) who requires a gallstone operation at St. Swithins. En route to the theatre, the incompetent orderlies ( Derek Deadman and Reg Lye ) manage to lose him, and, thinking he might have escaped, the doctors frantically search for him. On top of that an annoying little man ( Larry Noble ) wants an operation even though there's nothing wrong with him, an Italian family ( all thirty of them ) with no command of English takes over Casualty, a Welshman called Mr.Spencer ( Tony Hughes ) in grave need of physiotherapy winds up in the operating theatre, a corpse is left unattended in a corridor, while the unconscious Mr.Melia is placed in the morgue...
This blackly comic script is packed with subplots - any one of which could have made for an adequate episode - which merge magnificently, and there's a nice twist before the end credits roll. Frank Jarvis is particularly good as the wily Melia. Alison King - who plays love-starved 'Nurse Sheila Reynolds' - looks like a female Marty Feldman and no, I do not mean that as an insult. Another nurse is played by the lovely Merdelle Jordine, who was in the children's sci-fi classic 'Timeslip'.
Funniest moment - Melia wakes up in the morgue. Thinking he is in a hospital ward, he starts idly chatting to the 'patients'. On finding them all dead, he panics!