Ever since the 1960s when Dr Kildare turned Richard Chamberlain into a household heart-throb and Dr Finlay reassured the residents of the Scottish lowlands (both shows before my time, I’m afraid), it’s been an enduring truth of television that we love high-stakes medical dramas.
That’s because people are rarely in more of a crisis than when suddenly relying on a hospital, and there’s nothing more heroic than a life being saved. Of course, the doctors are generally in just as much of a crisis too. That’s when they aren’t having hot affairs as a way of coping with the stress of it all.
Well, as any doctor who has scoffed at the accuracy of these dramas will tell you, they are inevitably ramped up for effect. Or you often hope so — this week’s latest example, Malpractice (Sun/Mon, ITV1, 9pm) involves an NHS psychiatric registrar under fire after a tragedy on his watch.
Here are my ten best — do let us know in the comments which are yours.
10. Casualty (1986-)
Charlie, you are missed! Yet Casualty has to be in any such list because … it’s Casualty. It’s been running for 1,358 episodes, gave early breaks to generations of great British stars (Kate Winslet, Orlando Bloom, Jodie Comer etc) and, yes, is still decent TV if you give it a try with storylines that are often rather moving (the 2023 Dignitas episode was a potent hour of TV). At 39, it’s in pretty good health. iPlayer
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9. The Kingdom (1994-97; 2022)
An oddity. The surgeons at a Copenhagen hospital don’t just have to deal with health emergencies, but with the supernatural too. Liver transplants take place in the operating theatre; a dead girl is heard weeping in the lift. It’s what happens when a medical series is directed by the film provocateur Lars von Trier. Or rather, it’s as if Holby City had been written by David Lynch. Mubi
8. Getting On (2009-12)
More of a pitch-black comedy perhaps, but one underpinned by acutely truthful observations. Jo Brand was wearily sardonic as Nurse Kim Wilde, spending her time “wiping old ladies’ bottoms” — it was set on a female NHS geriatric ward — and Joanna Scanlan’s nursing sister seemed borderline insane. Yet the jaded naturalism of it all meant this could feel like documentary. Buy/rent
• ‘Critical does more medicine in an hour than any other medical drama’
7. Critical (2015)
The underrated third in Jed Mercurio’s medical trilogy (see also Cardiac Arrest and Bodies) was more like an adrenalised thriller in its novel approach: each of its 13 episodes involved a team of surgeons, led by Lennie James, trying to save a particular patient as their life hangs in the balance. Well, who doesn’t enjoy watching a frantic emergency tracheotomy? Sky/Now
6. This Is Going to Hurt (2022)
Ben Whishaw’s kind, gentle voice is a lovely thing when emerging from the mouth of Paddington Bear. When coming out of the mouth of a 97-hours-a-week junior doctor in a “brats and twats” ward, less so — apparently because midwives and some other female viewers felt this doc’s wisecracks were “condescending”. Perhaps that depends if you’ve experienced childbirth — if not, this is a darkly witty memoir of sleep deprivation and umbilical cords. iPlayer
5. The Knick (2014-15)
Is it a requisite of any medical drama that it must contain scenes of gore? Even The Knick, set in an elegantly syphilitic, end-of-19th century New York, was full of queasily authentic proto-surgery, as performed by Clive Owen’s cocaine-addled antihero. Owen is mesmerising in a show where you really do feel transported back in time. It’s just a long way from Call the Midwife. Sky/Now
4. Cardiac Arrest (1994-96)
ER began in 1994 (in the US), as did Cardiac Arrest, and they show everything about the difference between American and British medical dramas. Theirs had George Clooney being hunky. Ours was warts-and-all, filmed in a real hospital, written by a former doctor, Jed Mercurio. It had a mordant wit too. “How is Albert this morning?” the newbie house officer Dr Andrew Collin asks Helen Baxendale’s Dr Claire Maitland. “Dead,” she replies bluntly. It still feels worryingly real. Jed Mercurio Remembers… is on iPlayer
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3. Wit (2001)
Not a TV series but a hospital-based TV film, so it counts, this was a drama that left you poleaxed with emotion. Based on a Pulitzer prizewinning play, it starred Emma Thompson as a literature don staring at her mortality after being diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. It’s profound, thought-provoking and, when Vivian’s mentor (Eileen Atkins) reads children’s book The Runaway Bunny to this hyper-cerebral professor of John Donne poetry, fading away in a hospital bed, almost unbearably moving. Sky/Now
2. ER (1995-2009)
Eternal proof that audiences can’t get enough trolleys crashing through double-doors, defibrillators yanked into action and heroic doctors in scrubs falling for each other (see also every US medical drama since, from Grey’s Anatomy to Chicago Med). It helped that George Clooney was in it — that storm drain episode is still terrific (Hell and High Water; series 2, ep 7). Channel 4
1. Bodies (2004-06)
Viewers want, or need, to be reassured that our doctors, for all their personal flaws, are the gods we really can rely on in times of crisis. Our scriptwriters don’t always seem to agree. Bodies, Mercurio’s graphic whistleblower drama, presented the idea of a smooth, outwardly capable obs-and-gynae consultant (Patrick Baladi) as frighteningly prone to bodging operations. The ensuing politics on the ward from hell were compelling — although, for any pregnant viewers, perhaps a full-blown horror. But that’s medical dramas for you. iPlayer
