Holby City (BBC1)

'ON my ward we don't hang around talking to friends," insisted nurse Chrissie Williams sternly.

Those who regularly tread the Holby hospital corridors will know that Chrissie's love life is so complicated that she doesn't have much time for talking to anyone.

At least, that's usually the case. Perhaps her grumpiness this week resulted from a lack of male company. Then again, she didn't show much interest when her mother - who looks young enough to be her older sister - tried to fix her up on a date.

Or perhaps she didn't like taking a seat in the overcrowded waiting room as other characters took centrestage. "It's been 45 minutes, he's gone," said the surgeon as though someone had got fed up with hanging around rather than died on the operating table.

There were mutterings of the patient being "the victim of chronic understaffing", which is an illness you won't find in the medical books. Being up to full strength wouldn't have saved some patients and certainly wouldn't have made for good drama.

A woman with bad stomach cramps turned out to have a large cyst on her ovary and was pregnant. That wasn't the end of the story. Everything comes in threes, so there was a possibility that her unborn baby had spina bifida.

It was that kind of week. Karim was in remission from lung cancer but had an extreme form of anaemia requiring a bone marrow transplant. That provided an excuse for a public service announcement pointing out that few people from the Asian community come forward as potential donors.

Eventually, the boyfriend of Karim's estranged wife proved a suitable donor. She was worried that husband and boyfriend hated each other. "I don't think the bone marrow will mind," said the surgeon in the closest Holby City ever gets to a joke.

A mugging victim was admitted with a stomach wound described as "just a scratch". As soon as you heard those words, you knew he was in big trouble. No-one is allowed to get away with just a scratch in Holby. His wound was infected with a fast-chewing flesh-eating disease.

"Can we stop it?," the doctor was asked.

"Ask me in half an hour," came the reply.

I'm beginning to think that if you went into Holby to have an ingrowing toenail removed, you'd come out without any legs.

Unusually, the staff's personal problems took a back seat to death, disease and lines like "more swabs, suction, we need to stop that bleeding".

Nurse Donna was homeless, while Dr Diane struggled with being a new mother. Now she faces a custody battle in between fighting flesh-eating diseases.

There was also talk about spreading doctors' workloads to meet new legal limit on working hours. Anaesthetist Zubin wasn't pleased that surgeon Connie had pinched his ideas and paraded them as her own. "I will not take what you did today lying down," he told her - unlike their patients.