Trust Me, BBC1***

STILL waiting for that NHS op? Reckon you won’t see the inside of a ward this side of Christmas? Then think yourself lucky. Judging by the goings on in this medical drama, a body would need its head examined to willingly enter a Scottish hospital.

The last series of Trust Me featured a nurse (Jodie Whittaker) posing as a doctor in Edinburgh. This time the location is Glasgow, and there is a killer on the ward. Glesga, Glesga, Glesga, always going too far. As Sir Sean almost says in The Untouchables, Edinburgh sends one to the hospital, you send one (or more) to the morgue.

Then again, one wonders what too far would look like in a drama that is clearly pitching its tent in medical melodrama territory. Think Rear Window with a sprinkling of Shutter Island and every other “Is this happening or is he/she imagining it all?” offering.

Whittaker promoted to doctor

The mind being messed with here, maybe, is Corporal Jamie McCain (Alfred Enoch, late of Harry Potter) who arrives on the ward just in time to see a body bag being closed, which is only marginally worse than rocking up after tea and toast has finished. Jamie, shot in the back while serving abroad, must remain as immobile as possible until the shock to his system subsides and the damage can be assessed. It hardly helps with his recovery to hear from a fellow patient that the mortality rate on the ward is heading off the charts. Or that bizarre incidents, like scissors being left in beds for patients to impale themselves on, are rife. “I didn’t realise that being a cripple was so dangerous,” says Jamie. Stick around, kid.

Presiding over the gloomy chaos is Dr Watson - he’s heard all the jokes - played by John Hannah. Between this gig and last week’s The Victim, the Milky Bars and drinks are on the hard-working Mr Hannah, ably supported here by Ashley Jensen as a physio named Debbie Dorrell. This Debbie, lest you are wondering, does stretches, some of them with Dr Watson.

As luck would have it in Dan Sefton’s drama, Jamie is the ideal chap to be around if rum goings on are happening. Not only is he a former military policeman, like Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, but he has remarkable powers of recovery, being able to go from barely moving to making it across the ward to retrieve what could be a vital piece of evidence. Granted, he did so v-e-r-y, v-e-r-y, v-e-r-y slowly (so slowly I thought News at Ten would have to be delayed). He also fancies himself as a bit of a John Curtice, describing the chap in bed five as “dared to vote SNP for the first time but switched back to the Tories”. Watch your back, Sir John.

Susan Swarbrick meets John Hannah

Jamie seems more than capable of looking after himself, but Watson worries there is a failure to come to terms with his injuries. “I think we are still deep in a certain Egyptian river,” he tells a staff meeting. As if wheeling out a joke that’s as old as the pyramids was not bad enough, someone sees fit to explain it for any two-year-olds who happen to be up past their bedtime.

Ashley Jensen interviewed

Come the end of the first of four episodes, Jamie definitely thinks there might be more to this joint than initially met his eye. Then again, he has been told that the mind can play tricks, which is as clear a signal as any to the viewer that nothing here is as it seems. Maybe the entire Scottish NHS is an illusion and that’s why you are still waiting for that op? Trust me: stranger explanations have been offered.