Another fine Messiah

I mean, I know the National Health Service is a bit under the weather at the best of times, but this place looked like it was already a goner.

For a start it was absolutely boggin' (a useful Scottish word for when something's more than just plain filthy). I kept expecting Kim and Aggie from How Clean Is Your House? to climb out of one of the many shadowy corners, rubber-gloved to the hilt and

shrieking:

"Oh, Aggie would you come and have a look at this? Disgusting! How many years of wee-wee do you think is encrusted on that?" etc, etc...

And the decor! Darling, if Justin and Colin had seen it they would have run screaming to the nearest Farrow & Ball counter to order lashings of Dorset Cream and Ointment Pink.

It was all flapping tarpaulins, flickering fluorescents and piles of building detritus; all of which was designed to add an atmosphere of menace to the place seeing as it was to be the scene of most of the murders in this latest two-parter in what is becoming a hugely popular series.

But for the sake of credibility the dingy surroundings were neatly explained by the hospital manager as "sick building syndrome".

Sick? Terminal more like.

Anyway, grime and slime aside, St Paul's also appeared to be the most ill-managed and negligent establishment with beds this side of Fawlty Towers - not good news for a place where knives, needles and hard drugs tend to be the tools of the trade.

The serial killer - who was annoyingly obvious more-or-less from the start - had the run of the place, picking off victims with ludicrous ease by using hospital equipment and staff in a manner that was often pure satire.

In one scene a kidney was removed from the wrong man after the killer swapped over the note boards on the end of the beds; I say removed, it was positively hacked out with much glee to the cry of: "Get me a kidney dish!" from the surgeon as he triumphantly held the freed and wobbling organ aloft for its obligatory close-up.

Then there was the hilarious MRI scanner scene (hilarious unless you were heading for an appointment with one the following day that is).

Patient Pace Tierney, played by Liam Cunningham, was in hospital with an injury incurred during a prison riot he instigated and where he turned one unfortunate chap into a human torch.

The serial slayer drugged him, wheeled him into the scanner department without so much as a by-your-leave and set it up in seconds.

So we now know the baddie is definitely a medical type, unless one of the other suspects happens to be good with sophisticated medical kit.

He then shoves Tierney into the chamber and soft boils him for what seems to be an eternity. The show was almost over and we were still getting "meanwhile, back at the MRI scanner..." shots of Pace convulsing with his eyeballs turning cartoon red.

Cue Poirot style summing up now:

But why did Pace have an extreme reaction to the scan?

Ah, surely you saw the sign on the door saying NO

PACEMAKERS?

Yes, but I still don't ...

You see, Pace was the nickname given to Tierney in prison after he was fitted with a... yes, you've guessed it, a

pacemaker!

On and on went the deaths.

A bloke got crushed in an industrial waste bucket, another had his face cut off, a woman was squashed by a lift and one fellow was poisoned by a dodgy hospital meal (maybe that one's not so far fetched).

And while I'm on one, I must mention that the series has become saddled with a now-meaningless title.

Messiah originally referred to the identity of the serial killer in the first, and by far the best of the three DCI Red Metcalfe cases, but by using it to promote the second and now third unrelated crimes, it will have to continue as Messiah IV, etc for no reason

whatsoever.

Still, it was enjoyable, mainly thanks to a strong regular cast, the star of which is always Ken Stott, who plays the broodingly cerebral DCI Red Metcalfe with understated credibility.

From the lowish-budget Casualty-style prison riot at the beginning, through the well-scripted personal interest stories entwined around the murders, to the unsurprising denouement, it was great fun.

And there was great excitement at Gibson Towers when the new GMTV set was revealed this week.

Gone are all those naff bold primary colours; there's no sign of the big squishy sofa (Eamon Holmes isn't back yet I hear you cry!); and the fussy floral arrangements have been binned.

Now it's all understated colours and simple lines, but enough about Kate Garraway, and the back drop is a window which looks onto what appears to be the back entrance of a giant TESCO and a block of abandoned flats.

Still, seeing as GMTV stands for Get Me The Valium, it was probably only us who noticed!