CHARITÉ AT WAR

(Netflix)

In 1943 Berlin, the huge Charité Hospital is caught up in the Nazi war effort, training doctors for action at the front, with professors, nurses and med students enthusiastically but blindly pursuing their duty to the Fatherland.

Their work often involves experimenting on orphans, fraudulent psychiatry, and extreme surgery.

We’re presented with seemingly reasonable people who are committed to shockingly unreasonable ideals.

Shreds of an awakening conscience among one or two of the healers threaten their own safety, even their lives.

Nazi doctrine teaches that homosexual practisers and abusers are equally unnatural and are banned; plus, in this scenario, the SS have begun executing offenders. It’s not a good time or place for interns to discover their samesex attraction.

The series opens with one of the esteemed professors teaching alternatives to established methods of amputation; he believes removing just part of the leg of a soldier wounded on the battlefield can allow a skilled surgeon to rebuild the shortened limb by inserting a prosthetic. He demonstrates. Meanwhile, a med student claims the same soldier wounded himself in order to be sent home and she investigates this court-martial offence. Then the soldier falls in love with another man. Boy, is he in strife.

This is well-written drama, very well put together, with the real ugliness between the lines, not so much on the screen. Much is drawn from actual historical records. Horrifying medical experiments were carried out on gay men in Nazi Clive concentration Owen as Bill camps. Clinton. (MA15+, 6 x 50mins eps)