The National Health

A would-be blackly comic Carry On Doctor that never manages to work itself free from the deadly grip of Peter Nichols' script (from his own stage play) about Britain as a terminal ward. Jack Gold really ought to be up there with Nicolas Roeg. His BBC films (The World of Coppard, Mad Jack, Arturo Ui, Stocker's Copper) show style and finesse. But his features have either lacked the identity to leap from a genre (The Reckoning), or been constricted by theatrical origins (The Bofors Gun, in the taut, burly mould of British film-making, and The National Health, too diffuse and fussy to satisfy). All three films betray TV's main bad influence - too much respect for the sanctity of the script.