Homicide: The Subway

Continuing watching Homicide, we reach an episode entitled "The Subway".

This may be one of the most traumatic things I've seen on the television.

A man is pushed into the path on an oncoming subway train and is trapped between the train and the platform. He is alive but his spinal cord has been severed and he can't feel his legs. The trains needs to be lifted away from him so that he can be pulled out. But once he is moved, his heart will stop in 30 seconds and it is a 5 minute journey to the hospital. There may a million to one chance of survival, but this Homocide, it doesn't do miracles or fairytale endings.

Into this situation comes Frank Pembleton, a murder police faced with a victim who is still alive but who knows he will die soon. Bayliss interviews the suspect, Lewis searches for the victims girlfriend, but the episode is mainly a two-header with Pembleton and the dying man. The big questions about life and death have never been so urgent.

The man (played exceptionally by Vincent D'Onofrio before he was in Criminal Intent) is no simpering victim. He is angry with life, with the world, with the twist of fate that has led to this and Frank Pembleton is his friend in his last minutes.

In the past week, I've been to the theatre twice and the cinema once, yet here it has been this, on the small screen, a medium often derided as low-brow, that has left the biggest impression on me.

I read recently that the average Londoner will spend 5 years commuting during their lifetime. Travel safely.