medical
Hospital, BBC TwoThursday, 12 January 2017
It’s the ghastly scenario of a grim morality play. A man called Simon comes into hospital for the removal of a tumour in his oesophagus and the construction of a new food pipe. But there are not enough berths in the intensive therapy unit to ensure... Read more... |
A Pacifist's Guide to the War on Cancer, National TheatreFriday, 21 October 2016
Some have responded to the very notion of a musical about cancer as if the idea itself were breaking some unwritten code of what is permissible to put on stage – which seems a bit rich given that the same genre has accommodated pieces about AIDS (... Read more... |
ExperimenterWednesday, 23 March 2016
If an authority figure ordered you to inflict pain on another person, to what extent would you comply? That is the subject of Experimenter, which focuses on Stanley Milgram's controversial obedience experiment. Unable to secure a theatrical run in... Read more... |
MaggieThursday, 23 July 2015
We can’t seem to move these days without stumbling into the path of a zombie movie, making one wonder why walking dead with a penchant for fast food are suddenly so alluring.When George A Romero effectively created the genre in the late Sixties and... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Playwright Nina RaineSaturday, 06 December 2014
When writers research, it’s not all about digging for facts. Feelings also count. When Nina Raine spent three months visiting hospitals for a play about the medical profession, she found a strange feeling spontaneously erupting inside herself. “The... Read more... |
DVD: The Possibilities are EndlessFriday, 05 December 2014
The subject of The Possibilities are Endless does not appear until 24 minutes into the film. When Edwyn Collins is manifested, it is as a silhouette, as spectral as he is tangible. Collins is bifurcated: corporeal but also removed. The massive... Read more... |
Miss and the DoctorsMonday, 26 May 2014
This 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... |
