Last night's TV: ‘Fatal Experiments: the Downfall of a Supersurgeon’ (BBC4); ‘Ordinary Lies’ (BBC1)

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Louise Thomas

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It has the feel and look of a fine piece of imported European detective drama, the latest Storyville series, and no wonder. Fatal Experiments: the Downfall of a Supersurgeon is a tale that is scarcely believable, and “stars” a Swedish journalist who travels by BMW superbike and an Italian “supersurgeon” so well groomed and hunky that you could easily think he was an actor, in the handsome-and-likes-opera-and-can-cook-the-best-pasta-in-Umbria category.

Unbelievable, really, by the way, because the supersurgeon in question, Professor Paolo Macchiarini, was all too real, pioneering a kind of replacement artificial organ that, even to my untutored eyes, looked like a very unlikely project indeed. This was an artificial trachea, crafted out of plastic and then marinated in the stem cells of the patient who was about to receive it, and thus be able to breath and live. The idea was that the tube, when inserted, would sort of grow into the tissues surrounding it, and the semi-porous material would provide a fecund environment for organic growth.

Now, if I were in a situation where conventional medicine gave me no hope of survival, and every other treatment had been tried and failed, I would probably give it a go, even though it does, if you think about it, sound a bit far-fetched. Then again, not so long ago so did organ transplants, or statins. Even basic anaesthetics only arrived very late on in mankind’s occupation of planet Earth.

Even on the most unfavourable interpretation placed on Macchiarini’s work, his patients did live for some time longer than they might otherwise, probably as a result of his innovations. For his critics, though, this is not good enough. For them it would be better for a doomed patient to die by a firing squad than to end one’s life in agony later as a result of a failed operation.

So this documentary was about real-world morality and medical ethics as much as it was about the charismatic Professor Macchiarini, whose force of personality and reputation led to senior appointments in Sweden and Russia, and a global network of patients and contacts.

This was the first of three instalments of the story, and it is as enthralling as any thriller. I suspect the moral dilemmas thrown up will be more difficult to think through than the stem cell science.

Ordinary Lies is what they call in the car business a “crossover” or “hybrid” product – something that is an innovative cross between two established types. Or what farmers call a crossbreed. In this case it is the traditional soap opera and the traditional one-episode TV drama. I’ll leave you to coin a suitably modish portmanteau for the phenomenon, but it succeeds in taking the best of each “parent”.

Anyway, it works extremely well, here in its second series. It’s very Britain in the 2010s – people working in telesales and a warehouse, sympathy shags, stalking, alcoholism and child sex abuse. Most of all, though, paranoia, and what happens when sex and lies decide to copulate and reproduce. As they do tend to do.

Last week we found Joe, head of sales, played with the almost tangible tension by Con O’Neill, suspecting his partner Belinda (Jill Halfpenny) of cheating on him. So he does what people do nowadays, and installs secret CCTV all over the family home, and obsessively checks it on his laptop, often enough while on the loo. But, as he asks one of his workmates, “is it better to know something you rather you didn't, or is it better to never have found out?” In his case, it is definitely the latter, as he discovers underage sex affecting, once again, his own family.

Last night saw the nexus of sex, lies and videotape spread still further around the workplace, which must be the most sex-obsessed warehouse in the country. Thus, Ally, a freshly divorced young-ish woman attempts an ill-starred relationship with an intern, and the PA Holly, creates a fantasy persona with which to indulge in a little light stalking.

Danny Brocklehurst’s writing continues to be naturalistic, and the scenes poignant, if not traumatic, as the excellent ensemble cast keep the viewer fully engaged with things that they too would probably rather not know about. It deserves to be popular, this hybrid semi-soap.