Colm O'Regan: There’s a description for shows where people are really good at their jobs — competency porn
Colm O'Regan: 'It’s like the opposite of most TV. Mix-ups and people not telling each other things or bumping into stuff.' Picture: Alamy
We get our kicks in different ways, and you worry it’s just you. Is anyone else weird like me? Horror-reading the legal agony aunt columns in papers about wills gone wrong or rights of way blocked with piles of dung.
Does anyone else feel weirdly satisfied reading about the serial compo claimant being confronted with footage of them doing Hyrox? When will they drop their most recent case after their neck brace miraculously seems to be no longer needed? It’s not nice to feel alone, so it’s good to find a community.
That’s why I was glad to find there’s a word for shows where people were really good at their jobs. It turns out it’s ‘competency porn’.
We are currently ventricle-deep in . It’s a drama covering a day in an underfunded, overstretched emergency department in Pittsburgh. About three or four episodes in, all the experienced people are Very Good At Their Jobs. They know everything, they don’t panic, they don’t drop stuff. They take the time to explain stuff to the new people.
Even the new people know a lot of things. Yes, they get some stuff wrong, sometimes spill things on themselves or get pissed on (spoiler alert). There’s still plenty of drama, and patients die, and it’s very stressful. It’s also immersive. I keep barking at subordinates in the family for 200mg of butter and a 40mm butter knife. But this is a ‘teaching house’, and they need to learn.
Even when I’m pretty stressed after a one-hour shift in front of the telly, I can congratulate myself on watching a job well done.
My favourite character is wise-cracking Nurse Dana, who manages all the general flow of the place, beds and… lookit, she’s probably the best person to tell you that. In fact, to tell you everything.
In fact, that’s one of the things I love most about the show: there is so little time wasted keeping secrets. (I’m only at episode four, so it could be lost by the end, but still, so far so good.)
So much of their conversation involves how to respond to the next medical emergency there is literally no time for That Oul Shite. Even Dr Robbie’s flashbacks are efficient and on his own time, usually on the way to the toilet.
It’s like the opposite of most TV. Mix-ups and people not telling each other things or bumping into stuff. Someone is on the run from the bad guy, and they trip in the woods, and of course, they sprain their ankle.
Always with the sprained ankle. It’s always the woman, and the lantern-jawed hero has to hustle them away. That’s not how you sprain your ankle anyway.
You sprain it at walking pace while thinking about something else and walking down an uneven street surface (there’s a claim there — just don’t be filmed doing Hyrox).
I think the urge to watch competence comes from two places — we see so much incompetence in the news and also we feel powerless because so few of our skills feel ‘competent’.
They’re all soft skills when we’d actually rather be very good with a chisel. I’m sure I’m not the only one spending increasing amounts of time watching super sped-up videos of someone building a cabin in the woods from scratch.
But even that is spoiled now as they are increasingly AI-generated (the fella building a giant immersive aquarium next to a river using only a shovel was the giveaway). So it’s back to for me for another shift. Nurse! I’m going to need 45 minutes of high-paced, highly skilled ED drama. Now!
