It's funny how I do that - credit the writer on long form TV shows, rather than the director, often because there's more than one. But it acknowledges the importance of the writer. Only in exceptions (Hitchcock for example) is the director as important. Have to think about that one...
Anyway, opens in typical JM style with an extended and extremely dramatic trauma situation, packed with gore and medical detail, demonstrating the importance of a highly skilled team, giving us character development very subtly, and surprising us with plot twists. For sure, Jed loves to wrong-foot the audience - where the hell did Claire Skinner go?
Jed plots in spider's webs. He qualified and became a junior doctor, thus his first show Cardiac Arrest (1994). Bodies (2004-6) was another medical-set drama but he's also written comedies (The Grimleys, The Legend of the Tamworth Two), sci-fi (Invasion Earth), horror (a futuristic Frankenstein), and period drama (Lady Chatterley) whilst also having embarked on the sublime Line of Duty in 2012.
Through episode 3 I am beginning to think Jed has lost half his audience by now, who can't stomach all these graphic operations, this one involving a young man who loses both legs, has most of him opened up, then dies. Can't help thinking it would make a great training film though. And as it progresses we can't help feel the device of one tricky operation after another isn't balanced well enough by plot.
Ultimately, we just couldn't bring ourselves to complete the series - Jed lost even us.
Made for Sky by Hat Trick.
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