aytime television is a diverse offering. Any given weekday morning could see you veer from the low-stakes thrills of property-profits show Homes Under the Hammer to a dose of Frasier repeats, then to Holly and Phil on the This Morning sofa and back for some antiquing with Bargain Hunt. Designed to appeal to people working from home as well as stay-at-home parents, sick kids and hungover students, its scattergun approach can make it one of the most strangely enlivening yet comforting sections of the TV schedule – the perfect background scene to your day’s activities. For 18 months, when I was working from home as a freelance, I would eat my breakfast in front of the TV, usually opting for a dose of Homes Under the Hammer or Frasier, then get dressed and get to work. Alternatively, I would stay where I was, melting into the sofa, unable to find the remote as the entirety of This Morning (all 150 minutes of it) gave way to Loose Women and – on particularly unfruitful days – Jeremy Kyle. Those days stretched the definition of “work”. Yet there was one daytime staple that would forever lurk in the periphery, a bizarrely reassuring presence that celebrates its 20th anniversary this week: Doctors. Set in the fictional West Midlands town of Letherbridge, its daily 28-minute episodes unpick the middling dramas of a local GP surgery and its surprisingly wacky cast of characters. While Doctors may sound like a sanitised Holby City or House, it operates in a far more obscure and – dare I say it – avant-garde space. On the surface, each episode contains one medical predicament that is usually neatly resolved, while affairs and longstanding resentments bubble throughout the weeks. The seasoning, though, is sprinkled liberally in the form of a two-pronged attack: truly absurd plot scenarios and acting that is so wooden it almost seems as if the whole show is a running joke at the viewers’ expense. Take a recent genius episode in which a patient, Lizzie, suffered from a condition that made her see every white man she encountered (and some white women with short hair) as Joe Pasquale. That’s right, early 00s variety show comedian Joe Pasquale – who gamely appeared in the episode, as if to prove his enduring existence. You would think such a severe break from mental acuity would prompt some sort of panic. But no, this is Doctors, so Pasquale is used as a running gag and Lizzie is ultimately carted off for “neurological testing”. We never see her again. David Lynch would never be so brave as to attempt a Pasquale in one of his dream sequences. In another episode, a man entered the surgery to have a vasectomy, only to find out – on the suspiciously unsterilised surgical table – that his partner had been cheating on him all along, that the child he thought was his was the product of a Mallorcan one-night stand and that he should retain his vas deferens after all. He found this out because his partner was watching him have the surgery (in the same room!) and stepped in at the last minute to deliver another Doctors mannequin monologue. It may seem surprising that the drama has clung on for so long – having borne no notable acting talent – but its fans are a committed bunch, taking to social media to vent their outrage when it has been placed on summer hiatus in favour of the football and ensuring its steady survival in the ratings. Even now, as production has halted owing to the coronavirus, there have been numerous Facebook messages of support to cast and crew. These fans are on to something in their avid loyalty, since the drama in Doctors is so inconsequential that it makes for perfect background viewing during the coronavirus lockdown. It is a familiar hum of conversation to tune out while you work, just as you would at the office, or a woozy fever dream to accompany your own lethargy. Now that most of the UK population will have the chance to watch the show in real time, tuning in at 1.45pm in a post-lunch haze after their 15th consecutive meal of pasta and toilet paper to absorb whichever new medical drama and C-list celebrity cameo comes to light. Home workers of Britain, unite and take solace in half-ignoring storylines while aimlessly scrolling through your emails! Doctors is the perfect quarantine TV. Long may it continue.