“Those who, in the confidence of superior capacities or attainments, neglect the common maxims of life, should be reminded that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity, long continued, will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible.”
–Samuel Johnson: Life of Savage, 1744
Were it not a hideous truth, the comedically absurd case of the dehydrated patient who dialled 999 from his hospital bed to get a drink of water could have been a scene from Cardiac Arrest, the dark but for those in the know searingly accurate 1990s depiction of life and death on the wards at St Elsewhere’s. By a coincidence, Line of Duty, a police precinct drama in which the leads like Getting Things Done, not in the usual software way, but with hardware, much of it dark blue or grey and involving combustibles, is now running on BBC2. Both were written by Jed Mercurio, and both are about Mercurio’s mojo: the dark and bitter secrets that lie at the heart of two of our biggest institutions: first the NHS, and now the Police. If Cardiac Arrest was Line of Duty with stethoscopes, then Line of Duty is Cardiac Arrest with police badges. Even the protagonists, Andrew Lancel and Martin Compston, look the same.