It can be easy to lose sight of exactly how much the National Health Service means to us. The way it is often discussed on TV – in terms of budget cuts, staffing crises and promises emblazoned on the sides of buses – makes it sound all too often like a political football, an “issue” to be debated and exploited by parliament and media opinion-mongers. The NHS was always political, of course. It owes its very existence to the socialist ideals of Aneurin “Nye” Bevan; the fight for its survival is as much ideological as it is financial. But in the corridors of its hospitals, the NHS is not some grand political notion but a personal one. It is the thing that has delivered our babies, repaired our injuries, nursed our loved ones at the very end. It doesn’t get more personal than that.
Many TV series down the years have attempted to capture the NHS on screen, from documentaries like Hospital to the blackly funny Jo Brand sitcom Getting On. BBC One’s latest offering, This Is Going to Hurt, is certainly one of the better efforts, and it could hardly come at a more pressing time. Adapted from the best-selling memoir by former medic, comedian and Amateur Transplants singer Adam Kay, the series follows a junior doctor in the obstetrics and gynaecology department of an NHS hospital, played by Ben Whishaw.
