‘Critical’ finale review

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Fifteen minutes into this week’s Critical two fire engines with police escorts, all lights flashing and sirens blaring, came screaming into view and I found myself regretting my claim last week that, “big-screen action isn’t Critical’s bag”.

The season final of Sky1’s Critical seems determined to pull out all the stops. Rather than starting with the patient arriving at the hospital, this time round Glen and Fiona are out in the field and ‘first on scene’ – in Glen’s case actually involved in the accident itself.

Shaking off his own injuries he’s soon in his element (“Welcome to operating in the field,” he says) and more than ever the medics find themselves forced to frantically improvise in order to save their patients. This week’s improvising requires a BK amputation on the patient’s leg. (BK = Below the Knee; after thirteen weeks I’m now starting to talk in jargon.)

Critical Lennie James as Glen Boyle

For those viewers who felt uneasy when Fiona set to with a hand-drill on the patient a couple of weeks back, it’s time to look away again the moment Glen calls for a pair of bolt-cutters – although you’d need to put your fingers in your ears too because the amputation sequence is not just another triumph for the visual effects team, but for the sound department as well… and just to put the icing on the cake, the tibia and fibula have to be cut separately meaning that we get to hear the gut-wrenching crack of bone twice over.

With Glen and Fiona, and subsequently Billy as well, out at the scene of the accident for a good chunk of the episode it certainly gives things a sense of occasion but it also means that, in a slightly odd move for a season finale, the rest of our regular cast hardly appears at all.

Critical Prasanna Puwanarajah as Ramakrishna Chandramohan

The action moves back to the hospital later on but not for long enough to give anybody much of a chance to shine. Even Ramakrishna (whose regular pronouncements from the monitor end of the patient have been a curious but genuine highlight of the season) gets little more than a token moment.

It’s all, it seems, about Glen and Fiona. They’re no Ken and Deirdre, but having seen Glen contemplate leaving it all behind earlier on you’d have to be hard-hearted not to smile when he returns at the end, as unexpected and unannounced as his first appearance back in Episode 2.

Where all this smiley, lovey-dovey stuff leaves fiancé Tom, I’m not sure… but given that this is the season finale I think we can safely, and cynically, assume that this is a thread deliberately left hanging in hopes of a second run.

Aired at 9pm on Tuesday 19 May 2015 on Sky1.

> Order Season 1 on DVD on Amazon.

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