Putting aside Grey’s Anatomy, of which we’ve all grown tired after 18 seasons, 400 episodes and scores of once promising actors whose dead careers lay beside the roads of Burbank – yes, putting aside that, don’t we all love a good medical Drama?
Yes. Yes we do. And here comes a new one that combines all of the elements that have made Hospitals the most fertile setting for TV stories, second only to police stations. Why? Because an endless array of new patients come through the doors and into our living rooms, while at the same time, we come to know the “regulars” whose personal lives give us a whole parallel universe of storylines and plots. It’s a formula for success!
Top 10 Medical Dramas of All Time
This Is Going to Hurt, which debuted on BBC One is as good as or better than any medical drama I’ve seen since, probably, E.R. And I think it’s the show’s very British-ness that makes it a standout. The dialogue is snappy, snarky and dry-humored when it needs to be, and appropriately pessimistic and cynical in the most authentic way.
Even for us Yanks, the setting of the National Health Service in England, with its busted alarms and sketchy electricity and an unforgiving grind, is easily to identify with – we’ve all had shitty work environments and bosses that vaguely resemble horses’ asses, right?
Navigating that treacherous path is our main character, a junior Doctor called Adam (pitch perfect Ben Whishaw) who works in OB/Gyn, delivering babies and conducting other “downstairs” procedures on his patients. He’s being trained not to care, and he wants to oblige, but his cold, dead heart, isn’t so cold, nor so dead after all. He cares. They say that conflict is the essence of drama, and I’d say that the biggest conflicts are within Adam’s own head.
Besides a majorly botched job that happens early in the first episode and haunts him throughout the 7 episode series, there’s the fact that Adam is Gay and trying to have a solid relationship with a good guy- heck, maybe even get married- but he doesn’t know how far too stick his toe out of the closet.
And then there’s his stiff-upper lip, veddy British Mum and Dad who long for Adam to get back together with “that one girl, what was her name?, yes, what about her, dear?” A lot of this b-story has been done a lot before. One supposes that the LGBTQ+ representation is worth the tradeoff of TV plot situations that we know by heart.
The characters occasionally break the fourth wall – a tricky device that can bombs as often as succeed-it works here, but one is glad that it isn’t overused. Also, lots of colorful language- f-bombs and forceps.
The supporting cast are unrecognizable to most of us in the US, but what a great choir of sharp-tongued thespians – most of whom are funny and lift up the show when it threatens to get too dour. Not playing it for laughs is Ambika Mod, playing a rookie working under Adam who endures the hard work and soul-crushing energy until she can’t anymore. It’s a good performance for a somewhat stock character.
This Is Going to Hurt will air like a good old fashioned Medical Drama, which is to say: one episode per week – no bingeing. Remember those days? With the first episode premiering Thursday, June 2 (AMC+ and Sundance Now) and continuing weekly thereafter, it could just be the prescription for the perfect summer series.
