Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Seven 45-minute episodes
Synopsis: The NHS is broken and it breaks the people trying to hold it together
Recommendation rating: 4/5
What I like about it: funny, good drama and acting, compelling medical action scenes
What I don’t like about it: bleak and bloody
Review:
Adam Kay adapts his best-selling memoir very well and allows his character, a great fit for actor Ben Whishaw, to be complex and very flawed. Kay is a junior obstetrician who, by and large, feels compassion for his patients and therefore is doomed to crash out of his chosen profession during a mental breakdown. He takes his stress out on his house officer Shruti and his lovely boyfriend Harry, who deserves better. It’s a compilation of all the ways that the National Health Service is fucked, strung along by fourth wall-breaking wisecracks and gruesome, tense moments of surgery. Super grim and tough to get through but it carries strong messages.
Content notes (may contain spoilers): blood, medical procedures, genitals, childbirth, vomit, death, sex