Whatever It Takes (first aired BBC1 21.1.2013)

[Katrina]

Discuss this episode here

[hollyblaise]

This was by far the worst ever episode of Doctors. It has been going steadily downhill and today reached a new low. Between ManDAY and that bloody Karen woman with their pulling faces and chicken love and the over acting of the characters with the pregnant school girl impregnated by her half brother, I wanted to scream. It was obvious that Emily the school girl was much older than she was supposed to be. Louise Williams who plays her part is over 23 years old so too old for that part. The final fling of nonsense was Heston rabbiting on about Mrs Tembe. Oh gosh but when will it get back to being patient bases instead of so much exterior nonsense ?

[foxadoodle]

Was this the worst episode of Doctors ever? Well I'm racking my brains to think of a worse one...

There have been some strange storylines down the years - I'm thinking of Ruth's tapdancing, Archie exposing a corrupt drugs trial. But Mandy and the chickens is easily the worst I can think of. It manages to be both completely unrealistic, but also incredibly silly and deeply boring. You don't even get many cute animal shots, because it's clear they didn't get much time to film actual animals, so all you get are Mandy's reactions. And Mandy looking stressed and annoyed does not really make great television. She doesn't have anyone to act with for most of these scenes - the Fitzwilliams' wayward son turned up briefly and was rather cute, but he's just wandered off somewhere. And when Karen appeared today, you briefly had two moaning women in a yard full of chickens. Which isn't my idea of TV Heaven. What's going on? Did they do this storyline as some kind of dare?

But....I did actually enjoy the storyline about Heston choosing his partner for the ball. Heston does tend to take people for granted, so I'm very glad Mrs Tembe said no to him. She has standards...