ER (C4); Can Gerry Robinson Fix The NHS? (BBC2): The message went out: "Call Pratt, we need him here." Dr Gregory Pratt - no relation - was needed as ER returned with a new series that barely paused for breath, leaving viewers needing oxygen.

What else can you expect when there's been a shoot-out in A&E?. Hence the SOS for Dr Pratt and much talk along the lines of "I'm fine" (which is TV-speak for "I'll be dead before the end of the episode"), "It'll be okay" (meaning it won't) and "we can't control the bleeding".

Matters were complicated by having several doctors being patients in the aftermath of the bloodbath. Dr Abby was found in a pool of blood, not a happy position for a pregnant woman. "The baby is not coming now," she said as the abruptions occurred (they seem to be like contractions only a bad thing).

There were those who felt the carnage in the hospital was like "watching the slow, steady descent of the human race" which seems a valid comment to make about the current celebrity-clogged TV schedules but a bit on the gloomy side all the same.

The shoot-out was caused by the kidnapping of Sam and her son, with the abductors trying to outrun the law and take the boy to Canada, which some might consider a fate worse than death.

The troubleshooter roaming the corridors of Rotherham General Hospital was business guru Gerry Robinson. He had six months and no money to improve waiting lists.

A lot of the time was spent banging his head against a brick wall. Every suggestion to improve the running of the place was met by a wall of red tape and managers. You couldn't help feeling if they had fewer bosses and more workers, things might improve.

The NHS is the third biggest employee in the world but, as Robinson discovered in Rotherham, it is pretty hopeless at management-staff relationships. "I knew it was going to be tough but it's one of the most difficult things I have ever done," said Robinson.

The need to improve waiting lists was - what else? - ultimately a financial need. If patients are kept waiting, they might choose to go to another hospital, thus robbing Rotherham of income and money to pay staff.

Robinson saw the need to break down barriers between surgeons, anaesthetists and nurses who all live in their own worlds, regarding each other with suspicion, instead of working together.

Ideas that he wanted to see implemented within a few weeks would, he was told, take months to be approved - if, in fact, they were approved. It was easy, Robinson noted, "to lose yourself in jargon and clinical terminology'.

Getting a TV programme to sort out the NHS's ills might be considered an inappropriate way to tackle problems. But there's no doubt that in the three programmes, Robinson talks a great deal of sense. Whether he can get those running our hospitals to take notice is a very different matter.