It is the TV drama that has divided its viewers. Hailed by some as a brutally accurate depiction of the realities of working in an NHS maternity unit, This Is Going to Hurt has been denounced by others as misogynistic and insulting to women giving birth.
Now the actor who plays an exhausted and stressed female junior doctor in the show has rejected criticism of the BBC series set on an NHS obstetrics and gynaecology ward.
Ambika Mod – who plays the part of Shruti, considered by some viewers as the drama’s most compelling character – said she had received “many lovely messages from people saying you’ve portrayed the NHS so accurately – that’s really rewarding because it’s what we set out to do”.
The seven-part drama is based on the bestselling memoir by Adam Kay, who spent six years as an NHS doctor, regularly taking life-and-death decisions while exhausted by 97-hour working weeks. Billed by the BBC as “comedy-drama”, it graphically depicts caesarean sections, placentas, body fluids and chaos in the hospital’s “brats and twats” department. The lead male doctor is played by Ben Whishaw.
Mod said she was aware of claims that the series depicted birth as traumatic and women as disempowered and dysfunctional, but “we were as respectful towards women as we possibly could be”.
Shruti was a “complex female character” and the production team had included many women, she said. Mod researched the role by talking to junior doctors to find out how the job affects them “socially, emotionally, mentally”.
A lot of viewers had been grateful that the drama “showed childbirth as it actually is – because it is brutal, it is messy, and it is gory. And that’s not something we’ve seen on television before,” she said.
“It’s important we engage with reality. The NHS is one of the greatest things about this country, and we need to protect it.”
Some viewers have said the drama relegates female patients to “slabs of meat” who play no part in decisions about delivering their babies or receiving treatment.
Milli Hill, author of the Positive Birth Book, said Kay’s book was “blatantly disrespectful towards women. It sums up the misogyny that’s baked into maternity care – the idea that any woman who thinks she can control labour or plan for labour is an idiot, basically.”
Hill, who had only watched the first episode of the series when she spoke to the Guardian, said it had been “really triggering” for some viewers. “What women are objecting to, from the messages people are sending me, is women’s trauma being played for laughs,” she said.
Hill said that the drama was “all about [Kay], how hard it is for him. You’re not seeing anything of the women’s stories, you just see them as body parts in the background. It shouldn’t be him who’s the hero at the centre of the story, it should be the women who get to tell their version of events.”
She added: “There is no excuse for a woman to be traumatised by childbirth. And yet the more it’s beamed into our living rooms like that, the more it becomes a vicious circle. I’ve had loads of pregnant women getting in touch with me, saying is that what it’s going to be like? They’re absolutely terrified.”
Some pregnant women said on social media that they had been advised by their midwives not to watch the series.
Community midwife Rachael Dewey tweeted that the show “demeans women’s experiences/bodies and has dramatised attitudes we’re trying to move away from in midwifery/obs and gynaecology. Calling obs and gynae ‘Brats and twats’ – just sums it up really … It’s not representative of respectful maternity care and how birthing women should be portrayed.”
But Juliet Pearce, director of nursing midwifery at the Isle of Wight NHS trust, said the show was “hilarious and heartbreaking” and a “reminder of the human emotions behind every tired, scared and fallible healthcare professional”.
Jess Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley and an advocate for women’s rights, said she loved Kay’s book, which she had read on the recommendation of a midwife friend, and had begun watching the TV series.
Kay “shows the strain doctors are under, and a system that’s creaking and cracking”, she said. Her own experience of giving birth in an NHS hospital had negatives “but I also felt completely supported by the amazing staff”.
In a statement, Edward Morris, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said the drama “exposes the harsh realities that healthcare professionals can face when they work in the field of obstetrics and gynaecology in the NHS”.
He added: “The show also explores what happens when birth complications arise, or when things go wrong which can be very upsetting to watch … The traumatic scenes of the programme can be difficult for women and their families as it shows experiences of pregnant women who have had poor birth outcomes.
“We want to reassure women that the NHS is still one of the safest places to give birth in the world.”
