Come back soon, Nicky and Helen

Come back soon, Nicky and Helen

By MICHELE HEWITSON

In the beginning – this year’s series start of Mercy Peak – there was bonking. Alistair was at it with the awful Amanda. The jug was boiling over. Sex, on Mercy Peak, is always followed by a nice cup of tea.

In tonight’s series end there is bonking. Alistair is at it with … well that would be telling. But be assured, there is a nice cuppa in the offing. This is the nice thing about Mercy Peak (tonight, TV One, 8.35): it’s slow, and a bit naughty, but never so naughty that you are likely to start and spill your steaming hot cuppa and have to go to the emergency ward. Which is just as well. You wouldn’t want to turn up at Mercy Peak and get your second degree burns attended to – the staff there are too in thrall to their own emotional crises to deal with your medical ones.

Except for Nicky. She’s overworked and she’s gone through almost every eligible bloke on offer. It’s exhausting. Actually, for a slow-moving drama, Mercy Peak has proved hard to keep up with: who has had who and who might have who again. Luckily tonight we’re treated to a two- hour double-banger series finale in which some of those loose ends and characters are tied up.

Do Nicky and Cliff go on holiday together? Is he really going to Hawaii to research the latest trends in social work? Will Nicky learn to cook? And will she keep a man if she does? Isn’t it about time for a wedding? Is Alistair a prat? And where, his father wants to know, did he get those underpants?

Some of the answers to some of these questions will be revealed. Some won’t. You don’t so much get a cliffhanger on Mercy Peak as a molehill hanger. But I am rather nursing the hope that when it returns next year there will be a murder. The horrible Helen, the blonde doctor from Canada whose bedside manner is reserved for when she’s in her knickers, is driving our lovely Nicky around the twist.

Horrible Helen hasn’t time to do doctoring, but she’s already managed to flutter her eyelashes at every man in town daft enough to believe that a real doctor goes around in Heidi plaits and hippy beads. Off with her. I’m hoping the awful Amanda will sweep back into town, chop off Helen’s Heidi plaits – and reveal her to be a bottle blonde. At the end of tonight, Nicky takes a drive. The road sign says: Come back soon.

You bet. There are not too many homegrown shows where you can hear lines like: “Mr Blewitt’s rectal abscess needs draining and Helen’s not sure she’s up to it.” Of course she isn’t. She’s rather busy entertaining blokes like Eric, one of her many admirers. All she has to do is bat those lashes and he says: “I’d be interested in sausage opportunities in Canada.” I’ll be very interested to see what opportunities the storyliners can come up with for her. I am more than happy to forward some suggestions.