The BBC is going to reap a rich harvest from The Crimson Field. Sarah Phelps’s drama impresses for a whole number of reasons that will score with viewers: there's the closed community and class elements we know so well from the likes of Downton, as well as rather more room for fermentation of youthful hormones, male and female alike, among a shapely cast.
Most of all though it has the sheer emotionally powerful drama of war, with its stories of life and death that will be resounding throughout this “commemorative” year. The timeline of this opening episode was June 1915, the casualties of conflict already all too evident, its setting a field hospital outside Boulogne, where a trio of Voluntary Aid nurses were arriving to face realities any training they may have received back home certainly hadn't prepared them for.
They were Rosalie, Kitty and Flora, all warbling away in rarified accents, and they received their first baptism of fire before they even encountered a wounded man. Because they were entering the strict command structure of the professional military nursing service, women who were literally wedded to the work (they were forbidden from marrying). Matron Carter (Hermione Norris) and Sister Quayle (Kerry Fox) have been nursing since at least the Boer War, old colleagues (not so sure that they're friends) whose acquaintance has been disrupted by the former’s unexpected promotion. With this level of strictness they could as well be running the likes of the Irish Magdalene laundries, and washing bloodied bandages is as much part of the job as tending to the wounded (what does a nice Home Counties girl do when severed toes turn up in the laundry basket?). (Pictured above right, from left, Marianne Oldham, Oona Chaplin and Alice St Clair)
But you can be ejected from this community, as Chaplin’s character very nearly was, before she coped with an emergency that elicited sympathy even from her severe matron senior. Yes, even these battle-hardened veterans will get to show their human sides – Phelps has written a very tight script, and such lapses of discipline never become sentimental. The conflicts between by-the-rules strictness and allowing a level of humanity were there in the military command too, never more affectingly than with the trauma of Lance Corp Prentiss (Karl Davies), whose nerves had been shot in a way that more than merited a ticket back to Blighty (mental casualties being every bit as bad as physical ones). His return home was countermanded by a senior officer whose only priority was to get the troops back up line. We'll be hearing more on that score. As for the baggage brought by the nurses, it turned out to be much more than just what was in their suitcases. A fourth nurse played by Suranne Jones appeared before the episode was out, emancipated and on her own motorcycle no less.
The rotating cast of male characters may be a potential issue – there’s no lingering in this hospital: it’s either straight back to the front, back home, or six feet under. The most promising room for flirtation has come in the form of personable officer surgeons Miles and Thomas (pictured above left, Alex Wyndham and Richard Rankin), who haven’t lost their sense of humour despite the gruesome nature of their duties.
Phelps brings it all together outstandingly, the production values look every bit as good as could be expected, while the score holds back on emphasising elements of tragic drama in order to explore more angular nuance. There are only six episodes in this series, but The Crimson Field looks so good so far that a second instalment must surely already be in the bag.