Hopefully an excellent opportunity for our profession and Institution to promote ourselves as the antidote to bumbling fools. Public realisation of stupidity of total risk avoidance.

Looking forward to it.

Maybe a wakeup call to the bumblers like Yes Minister was to some politicians and civil servants and Fawlty Towers was to some hoteliers.

Is David Haig just going to hang around then?

LB

Look forward to it, but then I suppose how the character is portrayed?

Is he the 'odd one' that obviously goes too far and is seen to be a fool by his colleagues?
Or will he be shown as 'normal' and this is how the whole H+S culture operates?


But hey, it's only a sit com!

Guess we'll just have to emulate pendants and hang about in great suspense for the series to be broadcast before the questions posed above are answered!

In the meantime, I reckon we shouldn't be worried about the series. Does anyone with police connections know if any police officers and/or the Police Federation were bothered/aggrieved by how the police were portrayed in the "The Thin Blue Line"? Also, admittedly going back several decades, were any hoteliers bothered/affected by "Fawlty Towers" other than the one upon whom Basil Fawlty was allegedly based regarding his attitudes and treatment of guests? Anyhow, we can't do anything about what is to be shown. Just wait for the inevitable flurry of discussion on this forum following the first episode: How many minutes will elapse between the end of the first episode and the first posting of a reaction? :-)

On a semi-whimsical note I'm curious, after having worked as an OS&H adviser within a local authority, as to whether the scenarios and attitudes, etc. to be portrayed by the forthcoming series will be as wacky as in real life!!! Some forum users may recall the TV medical drama series "Cardiac Arrest". I've read and heard that a quite a lot of doctors liked it and thought that, compared with other TV medical drama series, its episodes were a reasonably accurate reflection of situations and attitudes in hospital. However, after the first series was broadcast, apparently no more were commissioned because most viewers either didn't understand or like the 'dark' humour employed. By comparison, numerous episodes of "Casualty" with their far-fetched scenarios have been made over many years presumably because research by/for the BBC indicated that substantial numbers of viewers enjoy watching them.

They're called Auditors aren't they?

Is there any truth in the rumour that Ben Elton gained at least some of his inspiration through looking at this public discussion forum?!!!! It surely contains many examples of pedantry, obsession with legal requirements, nit-picking, etc, etc for him to have used while crafting the characters and scenarios for the sitcom. :-(

Real life difficulties aside it's a good thing this is from Ben Elton. Blackadder II-IV and the Thin Blue Line are a couple of of the comedy staples for me. If David Haig's character is anything on a par with DC Grim then it's going to be a good start by any measure.

It's interesting that we fear how this may adversely affect the perception of our profession but there's a strong possibility of a positive effect. Think about Rowan Atkinson's character in the TBL, as much as he was the butt of most of the jokes he (mostly) came out on top by the end of each show.

Looking forward to it personally...

We one had enquiries from the local authority about the apiary that was marked out on our plans. They wanted to know what precautions we had when it came to managing chimps and gorillas and whether we needed a zoo licence!

Life in H&S with a LA is certainly "interesting and varied", particularly within Social Work.

As for "Cardiac Arrest", it was written by Jed Mercurio, who at the time of writing it was a Junior Doctor, and I agree that many medics, including my wife, thought it fairly accurate in may areas.