In medical fiction, young doctors are often depicted as superheroes, capable of working endless shifts with little or no sleep, and of having a thrilling social and love life.
British comedy-drama This Is Going to Hurt is a cheerful, but also very often depressing, counter-example of these commonplaces, courtesy of screenwriter Adam Kay, who adapts here his memoirs as a young obstetrician, a profession he practiced in the 2000s. His fictional alter ego, interpreted admirably by Ben Whishaw (Q in the last james bond), is a “junior” doctor in the obstetrics department of a public hospital in London, exhausted by the heaviness of his task, haunted by a medical error, but always ready to get back on track, so as not to harm his career. The rest of his life, including his relationship with his lover, suffers greatly. The same goes for his young colleague Schruti (Ambika Mod, moving), a studious and clumsy resident who has trouble carving out a place for herself in the permanent chaos of the public health system, at the risk of losing her health there, and maybe more…
This chronicle, both funny and terribly dark, of the daily distress experienced by these young doctors, beyond the small miracles they perform, is distinguished first of all by its realism, underlined by many British caregivers when it was broadcast on the BBC this winter, both visually (it’s far from being sparkling and modern…) and in terms of the issues explored. We come out of it shaken, with a new empathy for the resident doctors and all the nursing staff, who we know are already very tested on a daily basis.
To see in video