This Is Going To Hurt

One of the best medical dramas to hit the small screen in years. It’s an emotionally complex and uneasily hilarious examination of the U.K.’s National Health Service and a prickly character study played with a rich disinterest in likability by Ben Whishaw.

I’m glad I saw it, for its riveting story, for its stellar performances, and for delivering the honesty that Adam is holding inside himself. Like some of the best of TV, it shows how institutions and the complex problems embedded in them can rob even the best among us of our souls.

A fast-paced emotional rollercoaster, This Is Going to Hurt is hands-down one of the best dramas we'll see in 2022 and with the show hitting home just how much pressure the NHS is under right now, the adaptation couldn't come at a better time.

The BBC adaptation is excellent and Whishaw is a joy to watch.

Mixing tragedy and comedy to stunningly powerful effect, former doctor Adam Kay turns his own experiences into the stuff of TV gold while showing us the stark reality of a routinely under-funded, over-stretched NHS.

Adam’s wit makes the migration from book to screen perfectly. Even his sarcastic asides make the cut, in the form of addressing the audience, Fleabag-style.

One of the best of the year so far. ... Kay’s irreverence means he builds a more detailed and believable world than other medical dramas.

Bitingly funny, searingly sad, and fully educational—how can you beat that combination? If you’re like me, you’ll blaze through the seven episodes and find yourself wishing for more. Perhaps what we should wish for, instead, is that this series serves as a blueprint. If you want to entertain, raise awareness, and create a piece of lasting art while you’re there, look no further: this is how it’s done.

[Ben Whishaw] sets a sardonic tone of gallows humor that helps keep the viewer amused amid the appalling barrage of graphic medical crises and frequent heartbreak. ... Rewarding series. [13 Jun - 3 Jul 2022, p.5]

This is Going to Hurt sometimes feels like a howl of despair beneath its quippy veneer. Luckily, the howler is played by Whishaw, who has practically has a PhD in playing fragile characters. ... This remarkable gyne-comedy takes us inside a broken system and offers a chilling glimpse of the real stakes in the reproductive rights conversation.

Thanks to a fine performance by Whishaw and a well-struck balance between the funny and tragic, This Is Going To Hurt has the potential to be one of the best new series of 2022.

Hurt is the best medical drama in years. ... If it gets a bit preachy about this stuff, by the final few episodes, at least its critique is a trenchant one that’s rarely articulated on TV. The argument only hits as hard as it does because it’s grounded in the struggles of distinctive, authentic characters—not just Adam, but also Shruti, Tracy, Harry.

The talent of Ben Whishaw shines on its highest beams in this mesmerizing medical series about Adam Kay, who left his career as a junior doctor in obstetrics and gynecology at a London hospital to fictionalize his life into a comedy of shocking gravity. You’ll laugh till it hurts.

It all reaches satisfying — if usually bittersweet and sometimes downright tragic — closure by the end, even as there is clearly much more to be done with this world, and this main character, should Kay and Whishaw be interested. It’s been a while since TV has had a great hospital drama. This Is Going to Hurt definitely qualifies.

What will make the series so watchable—and for medical practitioners, perhaps, uncomfortable—is the honesty of it all. Which, considering the long history of TV medicine, will also make it a constant surprise.

With sharp editing and writing, the series balances both the intensity of the workplace with character development. ... [Ben Whishaw’s vivid, electric performance is] such an insightful performance that it doesn't need the fourth-wall breaking edge the series also gives him, which feels like a "Fleabag"-inspired approach not fully realized by this production.

This is where the drama excels – showing us how overworked and under pressure these young doctors are, and how much they’re winging it with no experience and not much clue what they’re doing.

This Is Going to Hurt is full of images and scenes that you’ll hope to forget, but, more unexpectedly, it also retains the two most difficult aspects of the book (and those, incidentally, that remain with the reader long after the foreign-objects-up-orifices anecdotage has faded). The first is the fatigue, and the fathomless stupidities, injustices and lack of resources that cause it.