HEART OF THE MATTER
MARION MCMULLEN looks back at heart-stopping NHS drama Cardiac Arrest which first aired 30 years ago
HOSPITAL doctor Jed Mercurio began his career in TV when he stumbled across an advert in the British Medical Journal from a production company interested in developing a TV medical drama.
The company was Tony Garnett’s World Productions and the drama went on to become Cardiac Arrest.
It launched on the BBC 30 years ago on April 21, 1994, and was written by Jed under the pseudonym John Macure as he was working as a junior doctor in Birmingham at the time.
He bought a Porsche with the earnings from Cardiac Arrest and left medicine to concentrate on his writing.
His medical background has continued to influence his work, with his series Bodies (adapted his first novel) starring Max Beesley, and Critical, starring Lennie James, both set inside hospitals. His police drama Line Of Duty propelled him to household name status. Cardiac Arrest started by following the fortunes of new doctor Andrew Collin (Andrew Lancel) as he began work in a big city hospital.
The series itself was filmed in a disused part of a hospital in Glasgow.
The medical drama sparked controversy due to its realistic depiction of hospital life and health secretary Virginia Bottomley condemned its portrayal of hospital staff, but the TV series topped a poll of UK medical professionals as the most realistic medical drama of all time.
Jed, who was awarded an OBE in 2022 for his services to TV drama, said: “I tried to get a lot of humour into Cardiac Arrest, the first series I wrote, and inevitably a lot of it got
cut out for time reasons. There was definitely a desire to have comedy counterpoint the darker elements of that.
“Also, the gallows humour felt like something that was important as a way of challenging the very earnest way in which people talked on medical dramas.” Cardiac Arrest ran for 27 episodes over three series and ended on a cliffhanger in 1996, w i t h Dr Claire Maitland trying to save Andrew’s life after he was attacked by a patient.
All episodes of Cardiac Arrest are