Sea Patrol Review:We’ve Got A Sinking Feeling…

SEA PATROL: Tuesday 10th November, Five, 8pm

Us Brits love a moan, but it’s all too easy to take things for granted.

The emergency services, for example. While the rest of us sit snug in our living rooms watching Deal Or No Deal and eating KitKats, this brave lot dash about in the cold and wet, clearing up bloody motorway pile-ups, and going face to face with gangs of feral teenagers.

Of course, there’s no shortage of programmes on TV about them, whether it’s cops chasing robbers or fly-on-wall hospital docs. Sea Patrol is the latest addition, following the rescue teams and coastguards policing the English Channel.

There are one or two cool bits. We get to see the ‘largest wooden hull tall ship in the UK’, which looks like a crazy pirate ship. The RAF winch off a sailor with abdominal pains, in choppy waters, by helicopter at night. It’s not Titanic, but it’s OK. Some of it’s depressing too – seeing tons of timber wash up on the Kent shore, after a Russian ship spills its cargo. Though Ramsgate’s builders can’t believe their luck as they loot all that free wood.

But some of it’s almost comically undramatic, like the scene where ‘no-nonsense’ marine inspector Ulrich – a sort of Wallander in search of a decent murder – investigates what went wrong with the Russian ship’s radar. ‘I think it’s satisfactory,’ says ship superintendent Boris, ‘Well, I think it’s not satisfactory,’ counters Ulrich. Come on guys, up the action, fight, fight! Or when a crew member is lowered to rescue a missing man on Dover’s cliffs – only it turns out not to be a man, just a bit of old reflective material.

Unsurprisingly the producers have, almost literally, gone overboard to inject some excitement. There’s an over-the-top Andy McNabesque voiceover. Incidental music more suited to the opening credits of Prime Suspect. Wacky camera effects, and cod 24-style radar graphics. The problem is, this isn’t a hammy ITV drama, it’s real life. And in real life people say things like: ‘Hopefully they will make it to Southampton.’

In short, mildly interesting, just not nail-biting, stuff. But there’s no doubt these guys – the RAF and lifeboat rescue teams, the control centre staff – do an amazing job. I’ll definitely feel safer the next time I board the ferry to the hypermarket in Calais.


Cheryl Freedman