green wing review

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Picture courtesy of lanna.

Average Ratings

Value for Money	8.5/10
Overall rating	8.3/10

88% Recommended23 out of 26 Reviews

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By bewilderness on 3rd Jan 2005

bewilderness's Ratings

Starring (Main Performers)	Julian Rhind-Tutt, Tamsin Greig, Stephen Mangan
Value for money	10/10
Overall value	10/10
bewilderness's recommendation

Good Points

Everything. The characters, the storyline, just the logo will do it for me.

Bad Points

That I've got to wait so long for the DVD and the next series! It may also put you off any sort of hospital treatment for life, because you'll be terrified that your anaesthetist will be like Guy.

General Comments

Green Wing is simply the best thing I have seen on the television. Ever. (And I thought nothing could beat Black Books!) You either get it or you don't - and people that don't, you don't know what you're missing.

At first I thought, 'how on earth is this going to work with about ten main characters? We'll never get to know any of them properly.' How wrong I was - every character develops wonderfully during the series, and the hour-long episodes meant that there was space for the main storyline to run as well as throwing in a few scenes that admittedly added nothing to the plot but were wonderfully funny (examples: the clapping game in the operating theatre and the spinning round on the swivel chairs). There's also a pleasant mix of people that have a few odd traits but you can sort of identify with and imagine really existing (like Mac or Caroline) and those that are obviously blown out of proportion to hilarious extremes (like Sue White or Dr Alan). Not to mention that you get both brilliant physical comedy from characters like Martin, Sue and Alan and also sharp witty dialogue scenes, often between Mac and Guy.

Despite the surreality, you find yourself really caring about what's happening to the characters and having strong opinions about them - you want to throw things at Guy, you want to give Martin a hug and tell him everything's going to be alright, you desperately want to see Mac and Caroline getting together and you feel a sort of agonising pity for Alan when Joanna finally tells him it's over. Plus the cliffhanger ending was genius - there's now no way I could possibly not watch the next series, because I need to find out how they're all going to get out of that ambulance, and how Mac is going to get out of going to Sheffield.

There's also the fact that I would happily watch Julian Rhind-Tutt reading out the telephone directory, let alone stabbing people with scalpels and being generally hilarious.

Some of the highlights of the series have to be -
*The Mac/Guy fight and its conclusion with the awkward hug
*Sue White dancing to her ringtones
*The 'Funkee!' 'Funkeh!' scene
*Mac and Guy constantly trying to get one over on the other, resulting in Guy eating coffee, them headbutting signs, and Guy sleeping with his mother (before finding out she's his mother, you understand)
*Alan trying to abduct Joanna - "What kind of a masked kidnapper are you?" "One that's loathe to contravene the local bylaws, actually!"
*Mac's waxing an owl line
*The 'she's my smoo too' charades scene
*Martin's 'see you in Zurich face'

I could go on and on.

Total Respect: +1