A class of their own Guardian, Thursday June 13, 2002 by Gareth McLean Normally, Dr Weaver is grumpy for no apparent reason. It's just the way she is - and possibly the stress of working in a hectic casualty department in snowy Chicago on a crutch. A couple of weeks back in ER (Channel 4) she flipped out because somebody kissed her. This would have been fair enough had it been Dr Romano but it was an attractive lady in uniform. This week, however, she had some justification for her grumpiness. Someone had, after discovering it in the abandoned bag of a dominatrix, put a sex toy in her locker for a laugh. The Oscar the Grouch of County General was not amused - you could have had someone's eye out with it - and so dispatched five of her colleagues to an all-day-Saturday sexual harassment-awareness seminar. Thus Abby, Kovac, Lewis, Carter and Gallant found themselves, without a whiff of TCP, in a wood-panelled classroom, waiting for a tardy tutor and trying to figure out who planted the offending sex toy. From such a Breakfast Club premise sprang one of the most perfect episodes of ER for ages, a study of characters and relationship unimpeded by frenetic bloodiness and trauma victims' need for intubation and/or defibrillation. Written by John Wells, the show's executive producer, this episode was about the things we never ask, the things we don't want to hear and how sometimes you learn more when the teacher isn't in the room. And it was also about the great big cauldron of simmering sexual tension that exists between Abby and Kovac and Lewis and Carter. No wonder Gallant kept his head down; that's a situation into which you don't want to get woven. While we learned that Carter lost his virginity at 11, that Abby dropped out of medical school, that most of Gallant's family are in the armed forces, that Lewis "didn't get" Waiting for Godot, it was Kovac who was full of the most revelations. We can safely assume that none of the following will damage his reputation: he was a virgin until his wedding night, he once played Hamlet (in Croatian, obviously) and he fences. Sensitive, poetic and manly: never mind post-match power surges, there must surely have been a collective "Thud" as lovestruck viewers across the country fainted at the exponentially increasing loveliness of Kovac. "George who?" I hear you cry. So poor, charmless Carter. How will he cope in a competition with Kovac for the affections of the lovely Abby? Well, he probably won't. His wealth and dislike of reality TV ("It's one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse") will count for very little when it comes to the crunch, especially as Abby watches Survivor, is already sleeping on Kovac's couch and we know that, as the new Doug and Carol, she and Kovac are meant to be together. Charm like Kovac's is textbook stuff - he's a character in a drama and was formulated to erase the memory of Dr Doug Ross from our minds. Other people - real ones, mainly - aren't as lucky. They aren't effortlessly charismatic; rather, they have to work at being attractive. While most of us would admit that we fall into the latter category (at least some of the time), few would be so frank about their inability to catch the attention of the opposite - or indeed, the same - sex that they'd be prepared to go on television and effectively say: "Hello, I am so lonely. I'm not quite sure whether it's my dress sense, my personality or my awful bad breath but no one will love me. Please make me over." For those who have frankness in abundance, there's Would Like To Meet (BBC2). After it finishes, you either feel dirty (like Dr Carter would) or thrilled (like Abby) at your own gregarious gorgeousness. In the week that Monkey Business (BBC2) investigated the catastrophe that was ITV Digital, The Guardian reported that the Metropolitan Police were searching for a chimpanzee in connection with the theft of a phone and some electrical equipment from a flat in Hackney. Al and his monkey chum fall on hard times at the same time as a mysterious, simian-related crime spree. Coincidence? You decide.