A DUEL even darker than Doctor Foster

A father and the surgeon who couldn’t save his son, in a bitter face-off from the creator of TV’s award- winning drama

When 15- year- old Alex Bowker is stabbed in the street by someone who didn’t like the way he was looking at a young woman, he’s rushed to hospital – and the surgeon who is called to treat him assures his father that the boy will be fine. Alex is being monitored, says the experienced and respected medic Jon Allerton, and there’s no reason for his father to be alarmed.

But there is. In the trauma unit of the London hospital where Alex is being treated, Allerton loses his battle to keep the boy alive. The father, Dan Bowker, somehow manages to get into the operating theatre and sees Allerton with his son’s heart in his hand and a look of increasing desperation on his face. Soon after, the boy is pronounced dead.

That’s the opening scenario of Trauma, a three-part drama screened over three consecutive nights and created by Mike Bartlett, the man behind the award-winning Doctor Foster, the drama about infidelity which returned for a second series last year. That was a story about trust and conflict between two main characters – and so is this.

‘Trauma becomes a giant face-off between two men,’ says producer Catherine Oldfield, ‘and it’s about three kinds of truth: the surgeon’s, the father’s and what really happened in the operating theatre. Audiences should have, and I’m sure will have, sympathy for both main characters.’

Initially, it’s hard to see too many people rooting for Jon Allerton, played by Adrian Lester. ‘After reading the first episode, even my agent was looking at me, saying, “Hey, mate, you’re a wrong ’un, always thought there was something dodgy about you,”’ admits Adrian, known for his roles in Hustle and Riviera.

‘And I can see why he thought that. Allerton has been called in to the trauma unit from his own birthday party, and Dan Bowker thinks he may not have been fully focused, that he may even have been drinking alcohol to celebrate his birthday.

‘Later on, however, things take a turn and there are reasons why people will feel sympathy for Allerton. By the end of episode two, I think viewers will be completely on the other side.’

Trauma quickly becomes a game of cat and mouse between the two main characters, with Dan Bowker – played by former Life On Mars actor John Simm – unpicking every aspect of Jon Allerton’s life in an attempt to get at the truth.

It also becomes a story of haves and have- nots. Allerton lives in a magnificent house in Muswell Hill, north London (filming took place in a property in Clapham, south-west

London with a value of around £6 million) while the Bowkers’ home is in a less fashionable part of the city and is small and claustrophobic.

‘ The first thing that struck me when I read the script was that it was an opportunity to tell the story of two cities,’ says director Marc Evans. ‘It’s a poor man’s struggle against a rich man in the melting pot of London.’

‘It’s the reason why we set the drama in London,’ says Catherine Oldfield. ‘You can turn a corner from a housing estate and be in a leafy street with huge mansions where the occupants earn huge salaries. We’re not saying one world is any better than the other or that one of the two main characters in Trauma is any better than the other.

‘Jon Allerton, for example, is richer than Dan Bowker but Allerton has made the most of the opportunities presented to him and has worked hard to make himself a respected surgeon.’

John Simm has two children of his own in real life – Ryan, 16, and Molly, 11 – with his actress wife Kate Magowan, and admits to going to some dark places during filming. ‘It’s every parent’s worst nightmare, what happens to my character, and Bowker goes through unimaginable grief,’ he says. ‘It meant I had to go to a dark place myself to convey those emotions.’

Similarly, Lyndsey Marshal, who John Simm (far left) as Dan Bowker and Adrian Lester as Jon Allerton plays Dan’s wife Susie, was left so affected by the role that she’s now told her agent not to put her forward for any similar ones for the time being. ‘I’ve got a five-year- old and a one-and-a-half-year- old, and when you have kids, it changes you as an actor, you suddenly find a whole room of emotions that you hadn’t been able to explore before,’ she says. ‘But, also, being a parent and playing a role like this is tough because you want to be as truthful as possible and that leads you into difficult, painful areas.’

Adrian Lester also found playing his role challenging, spending hours in the company of Chris Peters, the drama’s medical consultant, a surgeon at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, so he could look at home in an operating theatre.

The key to Trauma is the apparent infallibility of Adrian’s character, who is highly respected by his hospital colleagues, such as registrar Nora Barker, played by Jemima Rooper. Surely a man so good at his job couldn’t have been horribly at fault? ‘Audiences may think that,’ says Adrian. ‘What is certain is that Allerton’s professional excellence meant I really had to look the part!

‘Chris Peters talked about all the pressures of the job and about patient care, as well as about the actual surgery he carries out.’

Adrian, who is married to the actress Lolita Chakrabarti and has two daughters, Lila and Jasmine, adds, ‘I also spoke to my father-in law, Bidhan, who was an orthopaedic surgeon. Interestingly, both men said that your patient is not only the loved one who comes into the hospital, there is also their family who love them and are worried about them, and who need reassurance. What I learnt is that you should never give false hope to those relatives, about a patient’s chances of survival, but that you are inevitably going to lie because you have to look after them and care for them as well.

‘So what a surgeon might say to a worried relative can be laced with a degree of manageable peril rather than the brutal, painful truth.’

So is that what Jon Allerton is doing when he tells Dan Bowker that his son is going to be all right? Does the surgeon know more than he’s letting on? ‘I couldn’t possibly comment,’ grins Adrian. ‘What I can say is that I think Trauma is a very clever piece of television that twists and turns, and I think will get people talking in the way Doctor Foster did. It touches on things in our society that we should look at, know about and definitely discuss.’ Trauma, Wednesday, 9pm, ITV.

Jon Allerton is comforted by Nora