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.

The first time I watched Cardiac Arrest, I remember being shocked and frightened by the reality - mainly because I had been in hospital a few years previous. The acting is superb and although cleverly comedic, it's too close to reality to be truly funny - it's tragic - and so well presented

In each episode I can't help but gasp at the traumatic incidents that the doctors and patients go through - and the superb way that the actors portray them. And even though the series is nearly forty years old, it still resonates today in that nothing much has changed for the nurses, doctors or patients. Such clever writing.

The UK NHS is a national treasure, and this series should be repeated so that today's viewers can appreciate its fantastic history and performance in the face of jobs-worth administrators and uncaring governments.

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.

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.

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.