Season 27 - Bramwell Series 3 (1997-1998)
Growing up in a house where Masterpiece Theatre was always on in the background it's interesting what impressions remain of shows I only glimpsed in passing or watched a few minutes of. Over the years I had caught bits and pieces of Bramwell but my memory of the show boiled down to a room with bare brick walls with metal beds against them that looked like a warehouse. That would be Eleanor's hospital, The Thrift. Eleanor Bramwell is a doctor who, due to sexual discrimination, can't get a decent job, let alone actually enter an operating room. And who, because she tells female patients the truths their husbands are trying to hide and eschews unnecessary operations, is viewed as problematic. So in walks an angel investor and The Thrift is born. I can't help but feel that this was England's answer to ER. When ER debuted in 1994 it took the world by storm. A year later Bramwell premiered and since that time everyone has been wondering, what the hell was going on with this show. There literally isn't a likable character on it. They are all bombastic and problematic and have raging god complexes. This applies most to Eleanor. You want to root for her because she's breaking new ground, but she's annoyingly dogmatic until something goes wrong and then she's even more dogmatic about finding a solution. Which sometimes never happens. Her patients die. A lot. Though this just plays into the melodrama and Gothic nature of the show. Because if you thought that England's answer to ER would be mildly normal, well you don't know those crazy Brits. Amputations, ovariectomies, asylums, child prostitution, abortion, self-harm, transphobia, murder, wrongful imprisonment, faith healers, rape, you get it all with Eleanor Bramwell! And everything is handled in a barely contained hysteria, because the melodrama is what this is all about. And the melodrama is the only thing consistent in the show. Each season they felt they wanted to go in a new direction. Season one was setting the story, season two, well, it was extra asshole Eleanor, which, given she is a doctor makes sense, but given you're supposed to like her, not the smartest move, season three the show becomes more "realistic" due to the purchase of a handheld camera and character driven episodes, and season four, the less said about the fever dream that is season four where half the cast is gone without explanation and the show decides it wants to be really gritty with a vibe that can only be described as The Crimson Petal and the White meets From Hell well, the better. This show had it's moments, mainly between Eleanor and her father that were sweet and hopeful and showed a functional if fractious family that was of a class not often depicted on screen. Too bad its legacy is for the more wild moments. Even Google's AI overview agrees. And that's a bad sign.
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