Women We Love

The hospital setting of the demented new BBC America comedy Green Wing — debuting next Thursday — is as necessary to the show’s aims as the future business health of Donald Trump’s empire is to who gets hired on The Apprentice. In the case of both programs, just show us bad behavior and we’re happy.

But I could be wrong. As the quirk-ridden doctors/administrators of Green Wing spout nonsense, wave their freak flags, indulge barely concealed carnal cravings and play cruel jokes on one another, something about the antiseptic environs of an institution for caregiving lends this unmedical medical saga an especially lovely jolt. This is not a show about the impulse to heal, unless those wounds are psychosexual. A truly nutty throwaway bit, for example, involves undersexed human-resources director Joanna (the wondrously committed Pippa Haywood) sneaking a quick cheap thrill from a vibrating hospital bed — arching her lanky form till it resembles a perverted rocking horse. Later, when told that smoking creates mouth lines, she shuts herself in her office, slathers wrinkle cream around her lips and shoves a lit cigarette up her nose.

The other characters are equally maladjusted. Joanna’s partner in workday quickies is tweaked radiology head Dr. Statham (Mark Heap), a nerdy tyrant of John Cleese–ian proportions who practices the dramatic swish of his lab coat turning hospital corners. Curly-haired, egomaniacal and obnoxiously proud of his Swiss heritage, anesthesiologist Guy Secretan (Stephen Mangan) has a mental rating system for women, belied by the fact that he rarely scores. His sights are set on Dr. Caroline Todd (Tamsin Greig), whose arrival as the new surgical registrar in Episode 1 is ostensibly our entry point into this asylumlike workplace, but she goes native — succumbing to the farcical insanity of her surroundings — too quickly to be much of a center of gravity for viewers. She’s a bastion of normalcy, though, compared to staff liaison officer Sue White (Michelle Gomez), a frighteningly rudderless comic creation who is as likely to greet visitors while pretending to be a Nazi officer from a ’40s film as she is to get into a violent primping showdown in the ladies’ restroom with another woman. Imagine a scary female Kramer without the goodwill or, well, a sense of purpose. And I’m not implying that’s a bad thing.

Green Wing is tasteless, funny and one of the more unclassifiable comedies on television. It’s been a huge hit for Channel 4 in the U.K., partly because its repertory of actors represents some of Britain’s best comedians, and partly because off-the-wall is a cherished comedy notion in England. The show’s creator, Victoria Pile, in fact, was responsible for one of the more beloved sketch shows of recent years, the female-centric Smack the Pony, which made a defiantly funny stand for women as deadpan, off-color, even aggressive provocateurs. Green Wing continues that principle with its half-women, half-men cast of crazies, and arguably tips the balance of bizarro inappropriateness toward the females. (I’m telling you, the Sue character will freak you out.)

Stylistically, Pile — who also directed the nine-episode first season with Dominic Brigstocke and Tristram Shapeero — has set out to make Green Wing play out unlike anything else in comedy. There are ongoing stories, but episodes ultimately feel like sketch collections, thanks to a trip-hop/industrial dance soundtrack that swells for each scene segue, and the speeding up and slowing down of film stock to add a disorienting silent-comedy-meets-music-video glaze on all the Pythonesque absurdity. It takes a while to get used to, but as with any original comedy, the inspired performances — in this case, like graduates of the naughtiest clown school — keep you going.

It’s not a British Scrubs, either. Green Wing has no call for fantasy sequences and moral lessons. (Make it to the season finale, in fact, and you’ll encounter one of the more taboo-busting story turns in modern television comedy.) Its characters already live in a surreal parallel universe where the thrill of baser desires doesn’t have to be hidden. In other words, don’t worry about recognizing anybody on Green Wing. Just laugh at them.

Over at the American networks, ABC has found further ratings joy in the more conventional medical drama. Grey’s Anatomy has been likened to The Paper Chase and Sex and the City, which is probably causing a quizzical furrowing of your brows if you haven’t seen the show yet. The comparison stems from, in the case of the former, the focus on overly confident yet easily cowed interns. With the latter, it’s the Carrie Bradshaw–style narration of Ellen Pompeo’s character, setting up the week’s theme — boundaries, intimacy — at the start of each episode and bringing condescending, Cliff’s Notes–style closure at the end over a pop-scored montage. ("I wish there were a rule book for intimacy . . .") This fast-tiring device is also being used in the Sex-inspired show airing before Grey’s on Sunday nights — the inescapable Desperate Housewives — but there it’s less annoying: The irony is more artfully written and, more important, articulated with ghoulish, detergent-commercial smarminess by the unseen Brenda Strong.