By George

GORGEOUS George is back in ER and his bedside manner hasn’t changed one jot. “I love you,” he says in the final scene, although it should be pointed out that George Clooney’s Dr Doug Ross isn’t talking to a patient, but his other half, Carol Hathaway (played by Julianne Margulies).

They’re at home in bed at the end of a tearful episode that will jog the memories of those who’ve sat through all 15 series of the Emmy Award-winning medical drama created by the late novelist, Michael Crichton.

The series helped Clooney to superstardom after a career in movies such as Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes and supporting roles in sitcoms such as Roseanne.

He’s become a big movie star and a regular on the sexiest man lists. But, along with many other actors who’ve seen ER launch their careers, he’s made a return for this final series.

In the second of tonight’s two episodes, Ross and Hathaway are struggling to persuade a grief-stricken grandmother (played by Susan Sarandon) to donate her dead grandson’s organs.

SHE can’t accept he’s dead as he moved when she touched him. Just a reflex action, says Dr Ross.

There’s a spooky moment when Ross encounters a transplant team from Chicago, headed by Neela (Parminder Nagra) and Sam (Linda Cardinelli), and asks about his old pals in a “is so-and-so still there?” type of conversation.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, another familiar face, Carter (Noah Wyle) – a medical student when the series began – is waiting for a kidney transplant and meeting up again with his former mentor, Dr Benton (Eriq La Salle).

By the end, Hathaway is snuggling up in bed with Ross and declaring: “Not bad for a day’s work.”

Not a bad way for a long-running series to go either, with reprises from former stars. There are just three more episodes to go of the series set in the emergency room of the fictional County General Hospital, in Chicago.

Crichton, who also wrote Jurassic Park and Coma, based his screenplay on his experiences as a medical resident in a busy hospital. Nothing became of it.

Then director Steven Spielberg made a film of his bestseller, Jurassic Park. As a result, they decided to shoot the hospital story as a two-hour pilot for a TV series, rather than a feature film.

That was filmed in a former community hospital in Los Angeles because of lack of time to build a set. When the series was commissioned, the authentic-looking ER set was building at the Warner Bros studios in Burbank, California.

Spielberg left the show after a year in the producer’s chair, but was apparently responsible for retaining the Carol Hathaway character, who died at the end of the original script for the pilot.

A live episode, Ambush, was shown in 1997. The actors performed the show again three hours later so that the West Coast airing would be live as well.

Over the years, ER has won 22 Emmy awards, including outstanding drama series in 1996, and has received 123 Emmy nominations, more than any other TV show in history.

It is NBC’s second longest-running drama, after Law And Order, and the longest-running US primetime medical drama of all time.

FOR the past 25 years, Crimewatch has been appealing for information on some of Britain’s highest profile police cases, using reconstructions to jog potential witnesses’ memories.

Crimewatch On The Streets goes behind the scenes to highlight some of the major, ongoing operations the police usually carry out away from the cameras.

There’s a look at how officers are trying to tackle the sex trade and prevent suspected paedophiles from preying on street children in Thailand. Viewers also see the battle to stop illegal immigrants entering the UK.