Doctor on the Grope

I was back in the seventies again yesterday. I decided to round off my day by watching an episode of Doctor in Charge from around 1973.  Interestingly, it only featured two of the usual four doctors - Robin Nedwell's Dr Waring and George Layton as Dr Collier.  This was undoubtedly due to the length of runs of some popular ITV comedy series in the seventies.  Doctor in Charge, for instance, ran for forty three episodes split over two series.  Consequently, not all of the main cast would appear in every episode, so as to give actors time off during the run.  To return to the point, the episode I watched - 'In Place of Strife' - included some extraordinary, to contemporary eyes, scenes, which most definitely wouldn't be allowed in any modern sitcom.  Most bizarrely, Dr Waring mistakes a group of stereotypically seventies horny decorators who have arrived to repaint the hospital, for a group of medical students he is meant to be taking on his rounds.  Inevitably these rounds include a ward full of attractive young women, one of whom (played by the lovely Valerie Leon) is a patient of Waring's who is awaiting an operation to remove a benign cyst from one of her breasts.  You can see where this is going, can't you?   That's right, Waring gets his 'students' to 'examine' Valerie Leon's breasts, (after warming their hands, of course). 

Now, while it might, in retrospect, seem more than slightly disturbing that what is, after all, sexual assault, mass sexual assault at that, should be considered a source of comedy, what I found more incredible is that, when the mistaken identities of the 'students' is revealed, the patient doesn't sue the hospital, Waring isn't struck off and the painters arrested.  But hey, it was the seventies and things were different back then, apparently.  To be fair, later in the episode Waring does face the prospect of suspension.  But not because, due to his negligence, a group of sex mad painters were able to grope Valerie Leon's breasts en masse.  Rather, it is because he has unwittingly brought the hospital to a halt by provoking strike action on the part of painters, porters and nurses after he and Collier have shifted furniture, emptied bed pans and painted a bit of wall the decorators had missed.  Because, this being the seventies, the main thrust of the episode was to try and satirise the then state of British industrial relations, where unions insisted upon clear demarcations as to type of work their respective members were entitled to do. It's very mild satire, though and it is notable that Waring's superior, Professor Loftus has no sympathy for hin.  As he points out, Waring wasn't put through six years of medical school just for him to shift office furniture about - that's what the porters are paid for.

But, to modern eyes, the satire seems like a side show and the groping is the elephant in the room.  The lack of repercussions just seems incredible.  Whilst it is tempting to think that this is just another example of the lack of 'realism' in seventies TV, particularly sitcoms, the reality is that we still see this sort of thing in contemporary medical dramas.  Jut look at the BBC's Holby City and Casualty, for instance - how many times have regular characters in these soaps committed what, in real life, would constitute gross professional misconduct, yet face only the most minor of sanctions, returning to duty in the next episode as if nothing had happened.  That said, I can't actually recall any multiple breast gropings going on in Holby City.  The odd mass shooting, yes, but no knocker grabbings.  Obviously, I should be shocked and offended by what I saw in that episode of Doctor in Charge and should be calling for it to be banned.  But, I'm ashamed to say, it amused me in a perverse sort of way.  When you think about it, it is a remarkably dark slice of black humour to find in a seventies sitcom: the idea of some individuals happily exploiting their position as supposed 'medical professionals' in order to feel up strangers.  It also says something about the way in which we blithely accept the 'right' of certain authority figures to abuse their positions - until the patient realises the mistake, she is happy to be intimately groped by a group of strange men simply because they are wearing white coats and therfore 'must' be doctors and trustworthy.  Deep stuff for a seventies sitcom.