Ayesha Dharker

Finding Alice ends with an insulting finale

ITV's domestic comedy-drama series started out whimsical and ended up completely deranged, despite one stand-out performance.

Finding Alice, episode 5 review

How on earth are they going to wrap up this absurd drama next week?

Although Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze loudly informs us that it's now 1966, nothing much has changed in the Welsh village of Trefelin over the past three years. The villagers have generally accepted Prem Sharma (Sanjeev Bhaskar) as their local GP, although his clever, sophisticated wife Kamini (Ayesha Dharker) is still pushing him to expand both his practice and his horizons.

Her hopes are dashed when Robert and Basil Thomas, the flashy sons of the former mine-owner, return, throwing money around and announcing their plan to build a new town where the houses will have... wait for it, central heating and constant hot water. Imagine!

This gentle character-led period drama (think Heartbeat in Wales, with medicine instead of policework) was rightly garlanded with awards for its first series. Its third series is just as polished and charming.

Call the Midwife may have finished for now, but the combination of nostalgia and medicine remains potent. Award-winning drama The Indian Doctor, set in the south Wales valleys in 1964, is on a smaller scale: as the village GP, Dr Sharma (Sanjeev Bhaskar) seems to be responsible for everything from eye tests to pastoral youth care and advice on romance, and is supported almost every step of the way by his wife Kamini (Ayesha Dharker).

The new series opens with his mother-in-law Pushpa (Indira Joshi) arriving from a smallpox-stricken India and, in a piece of casting that should reap comedic rewards, Mark Heap is settling in as the very serious new vicar.