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Harley Street

The cast of Harley Street
  • Posted at 3:30pm
  • 07 August 2008
  • by AlisonGraham-RT
  • 5 comments

Every once in a while the RT Bonekickers Re-enactment Society takes a little break. We have to, for the sake of our sanity. There are only so many times we can run around the office, pretending it's a secret tunnel, while breaking off to exchange choice bits of dialogue. (Sadly, health and safety regulations currently forbid us from pursuing our devotion to its logical conclusion - carelessly setting fire to precious artefacts).

I'm president of the society, so I get to choose said dialogue, and my favourite line so far (and, let's face it, there's an embarrassment of riches, as the scripts are as ripe as a whole cupboard full of out-of-date brie) was the bit where poor Hugh Bonneville, as roaring sex-pest "Dolly" Parton, gazed sadly into a pit filled with the bones of First World War soldiers and muttered, reverently: "We are standing on the edge of living memory." Try to work that one into at least one conversation you have this week - it's not easy.

But, anyway, once we've had our fill of pretending to be destructive and really, really bad archaeologists, we re-muster to form the Harley Street Appreciation Club. This is a good one too, as the groaningly awful Thursday-night ITV1 drama set in - yes, Harley Street - is packed with re-enactment opportunities.

Never mind the script, which is hewn fully formed from the Cliff of Clichés, what about the accents? Terrible, terrible, terrible. Poor Paul Nicholls is supposedly posh private doctor Robert Fielding. But his northern origins leak out at inopportune moments. And what the hell has happened to ex-Coronation Street siren Suranne Jones? Why is she talking like that, like Margaret Lockwood in some low-grade 1940s Gainsborough Studios melodrama?

All of this begs the question - why can't private doctors be northern? All right, so Harley Street is set in London, but - now here's a surprise - London is packed with people who weren't actually born here, who aren't necessarily from down t' pit and who have flat vowels. I should know, because I'm one of them.

There is so much else to love about Harley Street. It's clonking obviousness, for starters. Watch an episode and I can absolutely guarantee that you will be able to track, without the aid of a global positioning system, the threads of the plot. Nicholls and Jones's characters work in close proximity so yes, of course, they have an Unresolved Romantic Past. And Nicholls's dad is a bluff no-nonsense northerner who has no truck with fancy la-di-da private medicine.

The whole thing makes me want to rip off my ears. So take my tip - watch Grey's Anatomy on Five instead - it's so much better.

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Comments

  • Posted on 01 September 2008
  • at 10:54am
  • by HJS

I totally disagree with all of you! I want there to be a second series of both!

  • Posted on 18 August 2008
  • at 10:45am
  • by Xan

Totally agree about Bonekickers - how did it ever get made or aired? I think we should be told.

  • Posted on 14 August 2008
  • at 9:05am
  • by Naj

The idea behind bonekickers as a drama was a good one and I looked forward to what I thought would be serious drama, but again we are treated to mind-bogglingly stupid dialogue and plots. Surely this should have been on at 5pm to suit ages 8 - 12. Disappointing BBC!

  • Posted on 11 August 2008
  • at 8:58pm
  • by The Watchman

Neither Harley Sh**e nor Bore-kickers will get a second series, such has been the as-bad-as-it's-possible-to-be reviews I've read. To think the BBC has wasted so much of our money on tosh like these programmes too! Suranne Jones isn't destined to trouble those recruiting for the RSC either...

  • Posted on 08 August 2008
  • at 7:54am
  • by Jonathan Lloyd

Totally agree about Suranne Jones. Normally she is brilliant. In Harley Street she is woefully bad.

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