Review of Paper Mask (1990) by Mike M — 17 May 2011

Apt that this - one of Film on Four's more commercially minded endeavours from the turn of the 90s - should return to circulation at a moment when the Tories find themselves in power again, the NHS has been left in a state of upheaval, and social mobility has fallen to its lowest rate for some time.

.. Though it lacks the refined clinical chilliness of those medical thrillers either adapted from or inspired by Michael Crichton ("Coma", "Malice", "Extreme Measures"), in its blocky, made-for-television way, it gets the abject terror of A&E, a place of cries and screams, the thinnest of curtains separating life from death, where even fully legit professionals are faced with making critical decisions on behalf of individuals whose existence (or, indeed, limbs) are hanging by a thread.

McGann, in what remains really his only substantial post-"Withnail" role, grows sweatier by the half-hour, as though the glue holding his face on (and his assumed life together) was rapidly melting away.