Holby City Told Off For Booze Binge Scene

Holby City - the BBC hospital drama that some small countries actually use as a way of torturing anti-government infidels - is in trouble with an alcohol watchdog because it sort of glamorised binge-drinking a bit once.

Apparently in one Holby City episode two medics drank five shots of tequila and then got on with their day, when everyone knows that after five shots of tequila you have to start attacking people in the street and crying. And The Portman Group - the drinks industry regulatory body - isn't having that at, pulling Holby City up for its "graphic and gratuitous portrayal of harmful drinking behaviour." Responsible actions, that's for sure, but surely The Portman Group are preaching to the converted - we get the impression that anyone who can manage to watch Holby City with any degree of regularity probably already knows a thing or two about harmful drinking behaviour.

All of television is currently under attack. Gone are the days when you can show a crag-faced chef pretending to catch fish and get away with it, or pay a giant disembodied head with a million voices to demand that people pay their license fee. Thanks to various rigged competitions and monarch-offending trailers, the whole world is out to get television to such an extent that the things we hold most dear - like Kate Moss' eyelashes - aren't even safe any more.

And now Holby City is getting in trouble too. In the past we've been quick to complain to Ofcom about Holby City, only to receive all kinds of official letters back telling us that just writing 'it's dreadful' and 'we want to punch the nurse with the too-wide-apart eyes' aren't necessarily reasons for Ofcom to ban Holby City forever - but The Portman Group has had more luck. The Portman Group - the regulatory body for the drinks industry - has complained to Ofcom and the BBC over an episode of Holby City that apparently showed a scene of gratuitous binge-drinking without consequence. The Telegraph reports:

The Portman Group… has complained to the television watchdog Ofcom and directly to the BBC about the "graphic and gratuitous portrayal of harmful drinking behaviour" in the show. The episode, broadcast at 8pm last month, featured a woman medic asking a barman to "line them up" before telling a male colleague, "neck these and come to mine". The pair then both downed the tequila shots but the programme showed no "harmful impact" of their drinking, said the group in its complaint. "We appreciate that programme makers want to mirror some aspects of real life but they should avoid the encouragement of harmful, rapid and excessive drinking," said David Poley, its chief executive.

And quite right too - everyone knows that when a character drinks anything more than a warm pint of bitter on a prime-time British TV show like Holby City they have to do at least three of the following to make it OK - 1) stare at the bottle resentfully for 15 straight minutes. 2) See a picture of their family from the corner of their eye and become so guilty that they have to lay it face down. 3) Drink while watching an innocent home-video of their child, who recently died. 4) Lurch around a bar propositioning unsuitable men by waggling their cleavage around like a cartoon hooker from the 1800s. 5) After drinking even a small amount of alcohol, smash up their surroundings and then sob in a corner.

The Holby City character did none of these things in her drinking scene, which is why the show is in so much trouble. However, the BBC has responded by claiming that the binge-drinking Holby City character is in the middle of a long-running plot about her burgeoning alcoholism, which we're just going to have to accept as true because even the theme-tune to Holby City makes us want to self-harm, so there's no way we'd ever be able to sit through an entire multi-episode character development arc without drilling holes into our skull out of desperation.

Read more:

BBC's Holby City Criticised For Binge Drinking - Telegraph