Cardiac Arrest

This television programme is a black comedy about the goings-on in a British public hospital. Anyone who has worked in a public hospital based on the British-style (ie Commonwealth countries) will recognise the satirical barbs in this programme. Each episode made me laugh, and at the same time say to myself, "tsk, tsk - how naughty of them to put that in".

I'm surprised this comedy didn't last longer, or receive greater recognition. It's a bit like fine wine. If it came out on DVD I would instantly add it to my small, select collection.

Cardiac arrest has to be the best hospital series made. Yes it was unpopular with the people but was a reflection of life in the NHS not as a patient but as staff. Espically the Junior house doctors who along with the nursing staff make the system work.

I was close to an individual working as a Junior NHS doc and they told me this was more like a documentary than a drama. I found it compelling and scary to watch. Its strength was watching individuals be subsumed by a monster of a system designed to care for the sick and how they survived.

Apparently the Royal College of Nurses complained about the portrayal of nurses as less than angelic, this combined with Helen Baxendale leaving meant a short but bitter sweet run.

See "Bodies" for more of the same from the script writer who is/was a hospital doctor.

Only just watched this made 30 years ago as I am catching up with Jed Mercurio's writing. I was a young adult in 1994-6 and it is interesting to watch this and be reminded just how much medicine has advanced eg DNA testing for paternity rather than just blood groups. Nurses still wore dresses, capes and starched white caps and doctors wore white coats. Also the fashions and music great nostalgia. The storylines feel rushed because each episode is only about 30 minutes. And I feel disappointed because the last episode initiates several stories but leaves us with multiple cliffhangers eg unanswered questions that will never be answered. Much better hospital dramas have been made since reflecting technical advances in the film industry (eg special effects) and issues and moral dilemmas facing the medical profession of recent times. But this one was good for it's time.

Gripping, compulsive viewing. This series was the BBC at its best. It sits alongside the likes of Tenko, Edge of Darkness, Brideshead Revisited, This Life as the cream of British drama. Its dark, uncompromising humour never failed to entertain thoroughly. It was so good as it managed to be left field but not esoteric, funny but not soft, sexy but not gratuitously so. It remains Helen Baxendale's best work by a country mile.

This sort of drama has been lost to a seemingly unending tidal wave of reality TV banality. Series producers need to watch this time and again to understand what really works.

It died too soon.