Oh good, an NHS trust has produced a video in an attempt to be funny while imparting an important but humdrum message.

You may remember last year Blackpool Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust had a hit with their flu fighters campaign video, which featured a normal bloke called Phil getting a hero’s welcome for getting his vaccination jab. Well, by “had a hit” we mean “won the approval of NHS England”, who did their own sequel with Phil, to excruciating effect.

In an attempt to top that triumph, the Blackpool trust has produced a dark and disturbing follow up, called “Reservoir Docs”. It’s a play on the Quentin Tarantino film Reservoir Dogs, you see, which came out 20 years ago but was probably the coolest thing people at the trust in their late 30s or early 40s had ever seen when they were young.

End Game looks forward to follow ups based on Trainspotting and The Matrix, but fears that anyone in the target audience in their 20s won’t have the foggiest, and might find it all a bit disturbing.

Because, in this latest film, a load of sharp-suited men (who, incredibly, are not professional actors but are in fact trust staff) forcibly administer the flu jab to colleagues. This includes a recreation of Tarantino’s infamous “ear cutting” scene in a hospital boiler room, in which the trust’s head of resuscitation injects a terrified-looking bound and gagged man.

We have no idea whether it has succeeded in encouraging trust staff to get the jab, but one positive outcome has already resulted: the film, having gone appropriately viral, has succeeded in persuading the Daily Mail and Unison to put aside their usual enmity and unite in condemnation.

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