Watching the first episode of This Is Going To Hurt this evening, I was struck by the resemblance to a show called Cardiac Arrest,1 back when Helen Baxendale was a new face and Jed Mercurio was still writing under the pen-name of John MacUre.
Ben Whishaw is very good in the new show and it certainly isn't trying to make the NHS look good.2 On the evidence of the first episode, the only thing stopping this picking up the crown of "the most realistic medical drama of all time" is that it remains to be seen how open the post-pandemic public will be to the proposition that pushing the NHS to do everything on the cheap while also forcing it to pick up all classes of work is inevitably going to make the NHS look worse than it should.
A lot will depend upon how future episodes depict the role of managers, I suspect. Plus, of course with any BBC show, how far the show catches the eye of the culture warriors in the government and press as they spoil for a fight/headline/soundbite.