tlc

17/11/2002

tlc is a darkly surreal farce-like sitcom created and written by Fintan Coyle, set in a fictional NHS hospital called South Middlesex where coffee is traded like drugs and pretty much everyone has a personality complex. Dr Laurence Flynn finds himself thrown in at the deep end when he gets his first job after leaving Medical School (where he failed his finals). Always the butt of jokes by other staff (being called on to revive dead people)he has to cope not only with the patients but mad colleagues too – an ex surgeon now the hospital chaplain and a German theatre assistant with a masochistic kink. The show never confirms what 'tlc' stands for, although it's presumed to be a sarcastic reference to the widely used abbreviation for 'tender loving care', but could equally refer to the alternative yet related abbreviation 'total lack of concern'.