What do you get when you take Scrubs, slash the budget dramatically and then do lots of acid? You get this very bizarre comedy from 1991, based on an improv stage show.
The storylines, such as they were, centred around the decaying, underfunded St. Christopher's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. It's so underfunded that the staff rarely extended past the small cast, and they only seemed to have one operating room. There was a Matron, two Doctors, two Nurses and an Orderly. Not surprisingly for a TV show in a hospital, there were storylines centred around murder, deception, pregnancy and, well, whatever the hell the writers had to work with.
The real appeal of the show came from the heavily-improvised, Writing by the Seat of Your Pants storylines, which were written only days before the episode was to air. This was due to the creative team deciding to take the approach of the original stage show, and having the audience vote on whichever plot twists were to occur next. This, of course, left little room for an actual budget, which meant that the main "hospital" set consisted only of the reception, the poorly-stocked ER, and some offices, with the rest appearing as a canteen (in one scene only) and a mural representing a hallway.
The characters were:
- Dr Ray Good, your average kind-hearted surgeon
- Dr Richard Lovechild, a sleazy surgeon who is after:
- Nurse Pam Sandwich, the Naïve Newcomer
- Nurse Effie Shunt, a nurse with a crush on Dr Lovechild
- Matron Dorothy Conniving-Bitch, a...yeah
- Warren Cronkshonk, the (rather filthy) Orderly
- Det. George Slabb ("Slab-bub")
- Bill Schwartzenhameneggenberger, a Serial Killer with whom Matron Conniving-Bitch was in a relationship
The Show contained examples of
- '80s Hair: Dr Ray Good has a mullet.
- Animated Credits Opening: The opening starts with a romance comic that animated and fades into live-action.
- Baby-Doll Baby: Meta-example. Julio is played by a baby doll but is treated as an actual baby in-universe.
- Betty and Veronica: Pam has trouble deciding between the good Day Good and rich asshole Richard Lovechild.
- Blackface: When Slabb goes to India, everyone is in blackface.
- Brother–Sister Incest: They find out after they're married that Ray is Pam's long lost brother.
- Celebrities Hang Out in Heaven: When Effie visits Warren as a ghost, God calls her back because they need someone short to run with Napoleon in the three-legged race.
- Conspicuous Gloves: Nurse Pan Sandwich, who never takes off her pair of surgical gloves.
- Conveniently Cellmates: Dorothy ends up in the same cell as Pam.
- Crossover Cosmology: The voice in the Hellevator lists Nirvana, Olympus and Valhalla as being on the same floor as Heaven.
- Disney Creatures of the Farce: Pam is followed by plastic animals held up by wires when she rides her bicycle.
- Driving a Desk: We get obvious fake backgrounds behind Pam when she's on her bicycle.
- A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted: Warren uses all the money he gets from being an Earl to buy the hospital at auction, even outbidding himself after he's winning.
- Gargle Blaster: One character's "friends" are trying to corrupt him before his wedding night. After all else fails they resort to a glass of PURE ALCOHOL! (which is steaming ominously). He takes a swig, immediately declares that he's going to get his rocks off with a nearby prostitute, then collapses unconscious.
- Hellevator: Warren gets on one after he kills himself but gets to take it up to Heaven to see Effie.
- Hell of a Heaven: Effie hates it because God is a Bad Boss and there's nowhere to get your hair done.
- Identity Amnesia: Whenever Ray gets hit on the head, he reverts to his child like Julio personality and back again.
- Lactating Male: Ray starts breastfeeding Julio while Pam his in prison after remembers a paper he read that theorised men can do this under great stress.
- Never Learned to Read: When Warren gets a letter informing he's been dismissed as hospital administrator, he remembers he can't read.
- Never Suicide: Dorothy kills Moon Unit and leaves a fake suicide note.
- No Swastikas: When Matron Dorothy Conniving-Bitch first gets control of the hospital, she wears a Nazi-style red armband with a letter M instead of a swastika.
- Number of the Beast: Dorothy's prisoner is "270-666".
- Offing the Offspring: Dorothy kills her own daughter
- Portal Slam: A Running Gag is to have special effects allow characters to walk down a corridor that's clearly painted onto the background. If Matron Conniving Bitch tries to follow them, she'll just walk into the wall.
- Rerouted from Heaven: When Richard dies and arrives at Club Heaven, Effie says she can't let him in because he's supposed to go to "Disco Inferno".
- Stylistic Suck: It ran on this! The best example of this would be the car chase between Slabb and Lovechild, which is done with slot cars. Also the Mural of the hallway, which was only ever mistaken for an actual hallway.
- Toilet teleportation: Dorothy tries to escape jail by getting flushed down the toilet.
- Too Important to Walk: Richard claims he never learned to walk until he was 10 because his servants carried him everywhere.
- Tuckerization: Moon Unit is named after Frank Zappa's daughter.
- Vine Swing: When Ray takes Dorothea to Africa, he swings across the background on a vine.
- Who Writes This Crap?!: Dorothy says that her falling in love in the last episode is an odd twist to the plot and asks "who wrote this?".
- Winged Soul Flies Off at Death: Effie flies off as a winged ghost when she gets run over.
- With Catlike Tread: Matron Dorothy Conniving-Bitch, who snuck around while saying "Sneak sneak sneak sneak sneak".
