Review: Holby City – Walk The Line (2011, UK)
Holby City is a long running, soap-style hospital drama that runs almost without a break all year round – currently in “season” 13. The end of the episode from 2nd August 2011 introduced Andy, an old school friend of a regular character, Dr Greg Douglas, who disclosed sexual abuse at the hands of a soccer coach back in their native Ireland after being admitted following a collapse. There are multiple interconnected storylines in this show but naturally we’re concentrating on the CSA story, written by Dara Fainaru.
Aside from not making the fictional paedophile in question a Catholic Priest that is when any attempt at quality drama ends in service to the soapy storyline. After the confession and twist when Dr Douglas sees a prison transfer in Greg’s notes and diagnoses the source of Andy’s latest seizure, This culminates in a literal cliffhanger near the end, which is used solely to force an implied disclosure from Dr Douglas.
If this storyline does proceed any further with the permanent character, you will have to wade through several other plots to get there and it wasn’t revisited in the following week’s episode on 16th August. Maybe there’s an element of realism in having a survivor go on to make a non-contact offence in downloading child abuse images. This stays in line with 2004 research statistics – but ER’s handling of child abuse in its final season two years ago was much better, without the difference in budget to blame. If the storyline develops any further and doesn’t get any worse, we’ll come back to it in a future review.
– CBG
