You may think some of the scenes in This is Going to Hurt have been written to get laughs - but they actually happened in real lie.
The new BBC comedy sees junior doctor Adam Kay, who is played by James Bond's Q actor Ben Whishaw, working in an NHS hospital.
The series may seem like fiction at times but its based on the real life Adam's diaries, which he wrote throughout his training and then published into a bestselling book in 2017.
Revealing the highs and lows of working on the NHS frontline, it shone a light on the horrifically long hours and life-saving decisions medics must make while being sleep deprived.
In the first episode of the series we see Adam waking up completely unaware of his surroundings - only to discover he spent the whole night in his car.
This is just one of the shocking stories that did actually happen to Adam, who was working agonising 97-hour-a-week shifts.
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In the extract from June 5, 2020, Adam wrote: "My life is starting to feel like an episode of Quantum Leap. I’ll wake up and not know where I am or what I have to do. Today, I startle awake to a loud knocking sound – I’m in my car asleep at a set of lights and an old boy is rapping on the window with the handle of his umbrella.
"It’s the second unexpected power nap of the night shift, after a scrub nurse tapped me on the shoulder while I was sat fast asleep on a theatre stool to tell me the patient was just being wheeled in."
One of the biggest themes of the book is Adam's struggle to get any time off work, whether that be holiday or sick leave.
The first time he ever called in saying he was ill, the junior doctor got a foul-mouthed response and was asked to come in anyway.
On Sept 27, 2006 he wrote: "I’m off sick for the first time since qualifying. Work weren’t exactly sympathetic. 'Oh, for f***’s sake,' spat my registrar when I rang in. 'Can’t you just come in for the morning?'"
He also explains how two doctors somehow managed to get the day off together so they could get married.
On January 10, 2009, he said: "Percy and Marietta’s wedding today felt like a huge triumph against the odds. Two doctors able to get their big day off work.
"And the whole day too, not like my former colleague Amelia, who could only wangle the afternoon of her wedding day off, and ended up conducting her morning clinic in full hair and make-up to make the timings work."
Plot lines that have featured on the BBC series did happen in real life, but some of the characters have been created for the series and their experiences expanded on.
In the first episode we saw Adam being called to remove an object from a woman's vagina, which turned out to be a ring she had been planning on proposing to her boyfriend with by asking him to find it.
The first death he ever witnessed was horrific as the patient started throwing up huge quantities of blood all over the walls and started choking.
But it wasn't all terrible, as Adam once managed to convince a couple to name their newborn baby after him.
On August 9, 2010, he said: "A patient named their baby after me today. After I delivered the baby I said, 'Adam’s a good name'. The parents agreed.
"I say 'Adam’s a good name' after every single baby I deliver – this was the first time anyone’s ever said yes. The senior house officer asks how many babies I’ve delivered. I estimated 1,200.
"He then says on average nine of every 1,200 babies born in the UK would be called Adam. I’ve genuinely put off eight sets of parents from naming their child after me."
After six years of training and another six years on the wards, Adam resigned as a junior doctor in 2010, several months after a heartbreaking tragedy involving a baby.
Adam worked as an obstetrics and gynaecology trainee for a number of years before leaving medicine for a surprising new career.
He has been a script writer and editor on TV shows such as Mrs Brown's Boys, Mitchell and Webb and Child Genius and had a sold out Edinburgh Fringe show.
Five years after he resigned, Adam was officially removed from the medical register and decided to get rid of all the files he had been storing, which is when he looked back at his diaries.
At the same time, junior doctors were clashing with the NHS over contract disputes and Adam was motivated to publish his diaries when then Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, accused them of being greedy.
"As I was reliving this time through my diaries, junior doctors in the here and now were coming under fire from politicians," he said in September 2017.
"I couldn’t help but feel doctors were struggling to get their side of the story across (probably because they were at work the whole time) and the public weren’t hearing the truth about what it actually means to be a doctor."
Now Adam has adapted his book for the BBC TV series of the same name, This is Going to Hurt, where he is played by James Bond Q actor Ben Wishaw.
"Ben is quite simply one of the finest actors our country has produced and a national treasure," said Adam when the casting was announced.
"There’s simply no one who could do a better job of playing – a much more handsome version of – me."
During filming for the series, Ben was helped by three amazing doctors who would come down to the set every day from their shifts to act as consultants.
They helped him learn how to pretend to perform a C-section and where to put his hands to make scenes look realistic.
"Well, I thought I was quite good," Ben told the BBC. "And the doctors said that I wasn't bad either. But obviously it's a big difference to transfer from a prosthetic body to a real one. Not a lot in common really between the two."
*This is Going to Hurt airs tonight on BBC One at 9pm
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