This is Going to Hurt
Adam Kay’s adaptation of his bestselling memoir of the same name, This is Going to Hurt benefits from an outstanding central performance from Ben Whishaw as harassed junior doctor Adam.
As an insight into the severe pressure that the NHS is under (it is sobering to note that this is set way before a deadly global pandemic reached our shores), Kay’s book is an uncomfortable read, albeit one that is leavened by black humour. In adapting it for the screen,
Kay has ensured that his central message about the crisis in the NHS due to funding cuts and lack of support for its staff, is not lost.
From the moment we first meet Adam, it is apparent that he is under severe pressure at work. He awakes in his car in the hospital car park, bleary-eyed and grey-skinned having fallen asleep there at the end of his previous shift.
He is acting registrar in the obstetrics and gynaecology department of a large London hospital. His shifts are arduous and it is tiring just watching him rush from one case to the next with only time to change out of a bloodied set of scrubs into a freshly laundered one.
He is also trying to maintain a relationship with his non-medic boyfriend who, despite the fact that they live together, he hardly ever sees, which is causing tension between them.
Fatigue and understaffing inevitably lead to (potentially fatal) mistakes and before the end of episode one of this seven-parter, Adam has failed to notice a key symptom in a pregnant woman, resulting in a very messy emergency caesarian to remove a 25-week old baby. And things get worse from there...