Critical: Trailer, certificate and where to watch
Jed Mercurio's real-time medical thriller, starring Lennie James
Year: 2015
Certificate: 18
Writer Jed Mercurio has become so closely associated with the hugely successful Line Of Duty that it's easy to forget he's written anything else. His first TV show was medical drama Cardiac Arrest, a genre the ex-doctor returned to with the brutal Bodies and then with this fascinating 13-episode experiment for Sky in 2015.
Each episode unfolds in real time, with Lennie James as an ex-Army trauma consultant who tries to save patients over each hour, and with a cast that also includes Outnumbered's Claire Skinner as a fellow doctor. James is excellent as the damaged tough nut, but then, isn't he always - see Sky's Save Me for more evidence of that - and the show is as gory as you might expect. Take that '18' rating seriously.
The pace is uneven, but that reflects the reality of those sudden shifts that happen in hospitals, between sitting around doing nothing and sudden, all-out activity. That attention to real-life was reflected in the process of making Critical, which had a team of experts to check the scripts - 13 from various fields worked on the first episode alone. 'Each draft of the script has been read by at least four advisers,' says Mercurio. (13 episodes)
