This Is Going to Hurt.
Greg and Zanna are put off becoming doctors.
SCORES
Quality of healthcare: 1
Quantity of banter: 5
SHE SAW
Two of my closest friends are doctors. In a group chat, one asked the other if she'd seen This Is Going to Hurt: "Crying" she wrote. The other responded, "Very uncomfortable watching. I think we're nicer in NZ but quite realistic." I'd like to believe that she's right that we're nicer down here but I also recall another doctor friend - apparently I'm a medical groupie - lamenting one day that her consultant had barged into the operating theatre where she was mid-hand surgery and shouted, "You didn't tell me you were going to f*** this up today!" By all accounts, the hospital hierarchy is alive and well in Aotearoa and, under current pressures, I doubt anyone's being nicer or more compassionate to their colleagues or patients.
This Is Going to Hurt is a confronting depiction of life as a junior obstetrician working for the NHS. The opening episode is structured like an episode of a reality television series: back-to-back chaos, close calls, sleep deprivation and adrenalin surges. It's like a dramatisation of One Born Every Minute but without any of the joy of the miracle of birth.
It ends with protagonist Adam Kay having to deliver a baby at 25-weeks after misdiagnosing the mother and prematurely sending her home. His consultant charges in as he hands off a palm-sized infant and stands in pools of blood, attempting to stem the haemorrhaging uterus of the young mother.
I could have easily given up after that first episode. Kay is unlikeable, the frequent asides to camera are a misguided attempt to replicate Fleabag's genius, much of the humour doesn't land and, if it had continued in that relentless hamster wheel fashion, I would've quickly become very bored - but not before becoming very very depressed. Thankfully a more compelling story does begin to emerge in the following episodes as Kay grapples with the fallout from his tragic error in judgment. He doesn't become instantly endearing but I wouldn't wish those circumstances on even the worst humans.
The inclusion of Kay's romantic relationship with probably the most forgiving and tolerant man alive provides welcome respite from the gruelling trenches of the hospital and might be just enough light to keep some viewers watching this otherwise bleak account of the state of public health.
At a time when our own healthcare system is coming apart at the seams, I can't decide if this series is required viewing or trauma porn. Let's just say, if you're thinking about taking up a medical career, a noble and gallant aspiration, maybe hold off watching this show. We can't afford for it to change your mind.
HE SAW
I could easily have stopped watching This Is Going to Hurt after the first episode. I actually tried to. My main problem with it was the casual cruelty at the show's centre - the ways in which the characters seem to completely disregard others' feelings, despite working in an environment where caring for others is the whole point of the job. Much of the humour, in the show's early episodes at least, is derived from "witty" one-liners designed to offend, denigrate and hurt others. If you enjoyed watching babies falling off chairs on New Zealand's Funniest Home Videos, you'll almost certainly enjoy this.
It's hard to imagine a show like this being made in, for instance, America, or, for that matter, any country besides Britain, where casual cruelty, under the banner of "banter" is a deeply embedded part of the culture and, in certain situations, the only available path to social acceptance. The ultimate instantiation of this type of behaviour in this show is Adam, the show's central character. He's so unlikeable, it's hard to believe he's based on the real person who wrote both the show and the hugely popular book on which it's based.
I pushed through after the first episode, primarily because Zanna made me, but also because she made a compelling case, based on the feedback of some doctor friends who had recognised in the show some universal truths about public health and had told her that Adam gets less hateable as the series goes on.
And so it proved. By episode three, he was still a bit of a dick but he was an increasingly complicated dick, under pressure in a broken system in which being a dick is less a choice and more a survival strategy. We see Adam as a product of the system, a person doing his best and falling well short because he is not getting any sleep, nor much time away from the hospital at which he works, nor any suitable social or emotional support, nor enough income to buy a fully functioning car.
The humour is still sometimes annoying and the show's breaking of the fourth wall is at least as tired as the main character after a 97-hour week, but as an insight into a broken system and the ways in which that system breaks the people working within it, and occasionally those they're trying to fix, This Is Going to Hurt is powerful and timely: suffering is the first step on the road to healing.
This Is Going to Hurt is streaming now on TVNZ+