medical
Miss and the DoctorsMonday, 26 May 2014This low-budget Parisian dramedy about doctor-patient relations is as odd, timid and well-intentioned as its socially maladjusted protagonists. Miss and the Doctors is writer-director Axelle Ropert's second feature after 2009's The Wolberg Family.... Read more... |
The Crimson Field, Series 1 Finale, BBC OneMonday, 12 May 2014![]() After a tentative start, and several episodes of insipidity, Sarah Phelps's World War One nursing drama started to hit its straps just as series one reached its conclusion. The pace accelerated, the characters flung off their camouflage of tepid... Read more... |
Call the Midwife, Series 3, BBC OneSunday, 19 January 2014![]() If it ain't broke don't fix it, and writer Heidi Thomas obviously has no intention of tinkering with the Call the Midwife formula. Virtually nothing has changed, except that there's a new character, Sister Winifred, while Chummy (Miranda Hart) is... Read more... |
Breathless, ITVFriday, 11 October 2013![]() Period dramas are all the rage, and you can imagine Breathless being plucked with forceps from a steaming cauldron in which bubbled Call the Midwife, The Hour, Mad Men, Heartbeat and inevitably a sprig of Downton, which couldn't hurt. It's 1961, the... Read more... |
Frankie, BBC OneWednesday, 15 May 2013![]() Introductions, eh? When you make someone's acquaintance for the first time, you can never really tell if they’re going to grow on you. They worry about this a lot when knocking up drama serials. So meet Frankie, district nurse, the new... Read more... |
A Young Doctor's Notebook, Sky Arts 1Thursday, 06 December 2012![]() Bulgakov gets about more than you’d think. As a character in the play Collaborators, the Russian novelist was most recently seen helping Stalin with his memoirs. Within the last couple of years his novels The Master and Margarita and The White Guard... Read more... |
Getting On, Series 3 Finale, BBC FourThursday, 22 November 2012![]() Somebody has missed a trick in not promoting Getting On to BBC Two. Where The Thick of It earned its spurs on BBC Four before graduating to a larger audience, and Gavin and Stacey made the comparable journey from BBC Three to BBC One, the sitcom set... Read more... |
The Effect, National TheatreWednesday, 14 November 2012![]() Science thrives on stage. In play after play, various scientific ideas seem to flourish in the warm, well-lit environment of the theatre, fed by a crew of artists and despite the threats of critics or other predators. Now, Lucy Prebble — fresh from... Read more... |
Getting On, Series 3, BBC FourWednesday, 17 October 2012![]() Getting On exists somewhere on the spectrum between Carry On and Samuel Beckett. Set in a hospital ward where mostly geriatric patients are tended by middle-aged staff all with problems of their own, it looks unflinchingly at the great maladjusted... Read more... |
Monroe, ITV1Tuesday, 02 October 2012![]() The screenwriter Peter Bowker won over viewers of all stripes with his wonderfully clever, musical serial Blackpool and sealed the deal with the chunky post-Iraq War drama Occupation. He demonstrated a deft narrative touch, an expert ability to spin... Read more... |
The Sacred Flame, English Touring TheatreTuesday, 18 September 2012![]() To revive a long-defunct play is dicing with death for a touring theatre company - was the play ahead of its time, or was it not good enough in any time? W Somerset Maugham was a commercial and critical giant in London theatre in the Twenties, but... Read more... |
The Doctor's Dilemma, National TheatreWednesday, 25 July 2012![]() “Of all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.” The Preface on Doctors that precedes George Bernard Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma finds the writer at his characteristic best: caustic certainly, witty... Read more... |
