Ben Whishaw is a sad, funny doctor in the This Is Going To Hurt trailer
The acclaimed BBC series is arriving stateside, courtesy of AMC Plus
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After premiering in the U.K. earlier this year, the acclaimed BBC miniseries This Is Going To Hurt will be available in the U.S. starting next month, courtesy of AMC+. Starring Ben Whishaw, the show depicts the grueling schedule of a doctor working for the National Health Service.
The official synopsis reads:
The series follows Adam (Whishaw), a doctor who is finding his way through the ranks of hospital hierarchy; junior enough to suffer the crippling hours, but senior enough to face a constant barrage of terrifying responsibilities. Adam is clinging to his personal life as he is increasingly overwhelmed by stresses at work: the 97-hour weeks, the life-and-death decisions, and all the while knowing the hospital parking meter is earning more than him.
Based on the memoir of the same name by Adam Kay, This Is Going To Hurt takes place in 2006 and addresses how overworked healthcare professionals have been long before the pandemic started. The author/doctor also created the show and adapted the screenplay himself.
“I strongly believe that the only honest way to portray life in a hospital is as a comedy-drama,” Kay says in a press release. “Much as a sitcom could never speak to the urgency and tragedy of life on the wards, nor could a straight drama convey the funny and ridiculous situations that pepper every doctor’s day.”
Adam uses a dark sense of humor to cope with the challenging job, with the new trailer almost immediately featuring him describing the obstetrics and gynecology ward as “brats and twats” while breaking the fourth wall. Outside of the hospital, the stresses of work bleed into his relationships with his mother and his boyfriend.
Whishaw is perhaps best known stateside as the voice of Paddington and Q to Daniel Craig’s James Bond. His filmography also includes a season of Fargo and movies like The Lobster and Bright Star.
This Is Going To Hurt co-stars include Ambika Mod, Dame Harriet Walter, Michele Austin, Rory Fleck Byrne, Ashley McGuire, and Alex Jennings. Jarvis Cocker of Pulp fame’s other band Jarv Is… contributed the score.
The seven-episode miniseries premieres on AMC+ on June 2, with one episode being released weekly.
30 Comments
Bright Star just kind of came and went, didn’t it?
It’s an incredibly well done show, imo. But you need to be prepared for the last two episodes. If you know, you know.
Yeah, I know. Oof. It’s gonna be hard to watch.
Because of this comment, I googled an episode synopsis and yeah, this seems more depressing than I’m up for right now.
Yes, it should come with a warning. That was really depressing ending. You suspect what is going to happen but it still was a gut punch. And the aftermath just makes it worse.
Anyone watch The Hour? That’s where I first noticed Ben Whishaw and thought he was great. It was a great show.
You mean, the one where Anna Chancellor is luminous? He was pretty good too.
Loved The Hour, and that’s where I first encountered him, too. Oona Chaplin (yes, of those Chaplins) is also great in it, as is Romola Garai.
And Jimmy McNulty using that weird British accent!
Yeah, my husband and I still say “You’re so clever Marnie, you’ve gotten everything you wanted” to each other all the time. My husband had a huge crush on Oona as Marnie!
‘Doctor’ shows have always kind of been the gold standard for melodrama: Marcus Welby MD., General Hospital (and all of the other soaps center hospitals too). Shows like House and Doc Martin (the “beloved Doctor Martin” Ugh). Sure, lots of drama and dark humor, but both of those characters are sexist neurotics and I’ve had enough drs. like that, which is why I’d watch Call The Midwife any time over those two choices.This show doesn’t sound bad but I’m concerned about it “depict[ing] the grueling schedule of a doctor working for the National Health Service.” Every new doctor deals with grueling schedules. Are we suggesting that the NHS is worse than what we have? Will Amuricuns watch this and say “whew, thank god we have an over-priced, for-profit health industry that leaves out so many working people (and kids, elderly, disabled, poor) ‘cause f*ck those people. See how happy OUR doctors are?” Seems very convenient, right now, imo.
They do address this in the context of the UK private healthcare system; it’s also overpriced and for-profit, but (I guess) not to the same ludicrous extent. In any case, there are several directions they could have gone with this; in the end they went with the more visceral take (pun very much intended).
I graduated from medical school in Australia a bit before the author and found it interesting reading the book as to how my career mirrored his until it didn’t.
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As someone who has worked as a hospitalist in the US (and knows docs who have done similar work in Canada, the UK, Belgium, India, Pakistan, the Netherlands and Germany), I can say without a doubt, it’s a stressful, exhausting, almost dehumanizing job with a high burn out rate no matter the country or how they fund it. And this was even before the pandemic.
Scrubs!
Scrubs is pretty irresistible. Do you have a favorite or least favorite character?
Gotta go with Dr Cox.
I get a kick out of Kelso and the Janitor.
This is a very weird response.
Bruh – I think I see the point you’re trying to make, here, but your post is insanely America-centric in its wording. You’re basically implying that when British content creators make British shows based on real British people’s lives, they… need to consider the reception it’ll have in the US? And that this show was made with the intention of advancing private healthcare interests in the US?That being said – the NHS is great and I wouldn’t trade it for the world, BUT it’s undeniably got some massive issues. Most other Brits would tell you the same thing. On a basic level – based on my limited understanding – most of these problems come down to its bureaucracy, which is an absolute nightmare and needs to be radically streamlined (and would be a Herculean task), but it’s not something inherent to a nationalized system.On the other hand, the Tories have also spent the last decade privatizing parts of it, cutting funding and staff numbers, and freezing workers’ pay. Some – including myself – would argue that this is at least partially intended to cripple the service and undermine public confidence in it, with the ultimate goal of converting it to a private/semiprivate system (one Health Secretary even wrote a pamphlet before taking office explicitly mentioning this as his goal). I have no idea if the show mentions this, or how much of an effect this had on things pre-pandemic, but there you go.
CTM is so much better than it has any right to be. Wife has been hooked on it for years but I didn’t get addicted until this past season.
AMC+ is our ONE holdout. We now subscribe or use EVERYthing else. What do you think guys?
Watched the first ep for free and then they asked for like 8.99 for the month. Did it so I can watch the rest and hopefully will remember to cancel it. I realize I am writing to you more than 6 mos after you asked the question. My apologies!
That’s ok, you’ve given me an excuse to say, “Thanks, Cunty!”
I watched this a little while back, and I thought it started off interesting but I couldn’t get into it. The main character is just very unlikeable, and not in a Dr. House kind of way of where he’s good enough to be a jerk, and the story beats you over the head with how crappy the NHS system is for new doctors having to juggle the demands of patient care and the demands of those overseeing them. And it may be true to life, but after the 3rd or 4th time seeing a supervisor screw over a resident they put in a bad spot, I think I get it.
It’s very strange how British television is (largely) publicly funded but isn’t afraid to get very political, while American television is (largely) privately funded and tries to stay apolitical as possible. There was a television film with Jodie Comer and Stephen Graham that aired on Channel 4 last autumn about a nurse working in a long term care facility at the start of COVID and the final scene is her breaking the fourth wall and telling the audience how Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party don’t give a shit about healthcare workers nor the patients they look after.
Channel 4 has never been shy of political writing, hence why the Tory Government is keen to sell it off so it will concentrate on its shit (but cheap) reality shows.In 1987, there was an episode of the soap Brookside, where an unemployed husband and father pretty much has a nervous breakdown from all of the things that are happening to him as a result of losing his job. They aired it the night before a general election. Not that it helped, but at least they tried.
Question, is the main character a resident (or whatever they call the equivalent in the UK) or is he a new residency graduate, but low on the totem pole?