This is Going to Hurt
Television | BBC ★★★✩✩

I’ve been waiting to review the much-hyped TV adaptation of Adam Kay’s excellent book This Is Going To Hurt until after I’d seen a few more episodes.

After finishing the first one, I had that strange sensation of simultaneously appreciating the superior quality of a thing, while being nonplussed to ever experience it again. With a script that focuses more on the later half of the memoir, when Adam (Ben Whishaw) is overworked as an NHS doctor on the obstetrics and gynaecology ward, we follow his straining and failing to maintain any semblance of a healthy work-life balance. Unless passing out from exhaustion in your car is something to strive for.

This Is Going To Hurt

Ben Whishaw in the TV adaptation of Adam Kay's book

Other incidents from the book are relegated to a new character, junior doctor Shruti, played by Ambika Mod in a well-deserved breakout role, and while the overall narrative pushes events in different directions, the overall theme remains the same — an underfunded NHS staying afloat because of the valiant efforts of its staff and the subsequent price they pay. What’s different is the tone, and it’s that which is holding me back from jumping on the TV bandwagon.

A few years before the birth of our near teenager, a similar TV drama, Bodies, was broadcast, which I couldn’t get enough of. It was terrifying in its illustration of how, just like in the normal world, mistakes could happen due to incompetence, ego, office politics, indifference or cutting corners. Except the repercussions were infinitely greater. The main character recognised this and we followed his efforts to fight that system. You tuned in to see if he could win.

This Is Going To Hurt may be an upgrade in most ways; more nitty-gritty details to up its authenticity, pithy dialogue, excellent acting, in particular Whishaw riddled with gaunt exhaustion, stomach-churning special effects and all tied together by confident, subtly slick direction. However, the core story is of someone struggling to survive the system, rather than confront it. It makes it probably more true to life. It makes it even scarier for prospective parents. It doesn’t make it a better drama.

Which is where tone comes in. Because if you’re not particularly invested in finding out what happens next, you at least need to care about who it happens to. Which this programme seems to go out of its way to prevent. Side comments come out as mean and snarky, and motivations for progressing up the career ladder in order to get a nicer car and a bigger home aren’t exactly noble.

It’s honest, bravely so, but it makes it harder for the medicine to go down. Making it then even more surprising that the principal element seemingly dropped from the source... was the laughter. With humour, a character can get away with pretty much anything, it imbues charm, it can elicit sympathy. This may be billed as a comedy drama, but that’s like calling Scrubs a drama. It’s a misdiagnosis, and unfortunately it means that what really ends up getting hurt is the show itself.