Reversals (ITV1): WHEN a suitor told Charlotte that "you are not like other women", he was closer to the truth than he realised.

For Charlotte was really Christopher in this gender-bending romantic comedy which united two of TV's busiest and best actors, Sarah Parish and Marc Warren.

They were infinitely better than the script deserved as a couple, both doctors, who swap roles to put right sexual discrimination in the medical profession.

As Charlotte said: "Being a doctor is the hardest job known to man - if you're a woman".

Chris is a cutting edge gynaecologist (which sounds painful) who wins a top job at a new hospital. Charlotte is equally capable but has to teach to prove herself because her sex counts against her ambition to become a consultant.

She feels she's as qualified as any man. After all, she points out, she knows her way round a woman's body better than anyone. Frustrated, she puts on a suit, a wig and a deep voice, and pretends to be Chris. To prove that a guy can change (into a bra and knickers), he drags himself up and becomes teacher Charlotte.

Together they take on a sexist consultant (Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Anthony Head) who believes in whipping out women's insides on the economic pretext that it saves trouble and time to "cut the bloody thing out".

Inevitably, both Chris and Charlotte have to contend not only with prejudice but the advances of the opposite - but, in fact, same - sex.

The whole thing reminded me of one of those dodgy 1960s sex comedies, only lacking the nudity and sex. And many laughs, for that matter. "I've been nothing but straight with you since I shaved my legs," was one of Chris's better lines.

The whole thing was, by turns, vaguely amusing and deeply embarrassing. Parish and Warren looked like they had fun swapping sexes, but both deserve something better than this.

Published: 20/11/2003