This Is Going To Hurt Comedy Series: First Impression And Book Comparison

‘This Is Going To Hurt’ is a comedy-drama television series with seven episodes created by Adam Kay, who also wrote the memoir of the same name; this medical show is directed by Lucy Forbes and Tom Kingsley, starring Ben Whishaw as a National Health Service (NHS) doctor “working through the ranks of hospital hierarchy”. The series premiered on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on the 8^th of February 2022 and is set to air on AMC in the US with a date soon to be confirmed.

The plot for the series is as follows:

“An obstetrics and gynaecology doctor works his way up through the ranks of hospital hierarchy, as he clings to his personal life which is affected by the long hours and stressful decisions.”

The plot for the memoir is as follows:

“It is a collection of diary entries written by Kay during his medical training from 2004 to 2010. Kay’s book discusses political issues in the health care system of the National Health Service in the United Kingdom and societal conflicts between the general population and neglected doctors.”

Watch the trailer for the series below:

‘This Is Going To Hurt’ “depicts the exhausting life of a British doctor with dark comedy”, according to Richard Fisher, which I completely agree with. Taking the setting, procedures, and emergencies into account, ‘This Is Going To Hurt’ has a very authentic dialogue and realism aspect in the show that one can see in many other medical dramas; however, what makes this one different is the dark comical and British humour themes running throughout all seven episodes. The biggest depiction that stood out to me between medical dramas and ‘This Is Going To Hurt’, was the lack of professionalism.

What ‘This Is Going To Hurt’ did really well, according to Richard Fisher, was that it showed “just how unflinchingly exhausting and thankless the job of a medical professional can be. In more conventional hospital dramas, the antagonists are usually colleagues, patients, disease, or the wounded body – these are all present, but the primary foe that Kay is up against is the healthcare system itself. Under-funded and under-staffed, it threatens to drain everything from those toiling within it. There’s not a hint of glamour or nobility to this work.”

The key theme in the book version is the mistreatment and neglect that doctors have to endure, and throughout Adam Kay’s time working for the NHS, he was “deprived of multiple basic amenities that other occupations have”. The sense of neglect heightened when Adam Kay was not allowed to take time off to emotionally recover after a traumatic event and no therapy was offered to help him; “Kay claims that people forget doctors also have to spend time with their families and friends, they have to sleep, eat and take care of themselves, and more importantly they expect doctors to be error-free”.

The title itself is perfect for what is to come, whether you are reading or watching, because it is going to truly hurt learning what life is like as a junior doctor; more importantly, it will make you laugh, which is a huge accomplishment for a memoir with such serious themes as aforementioned.

If you are interested in watching the series or reading the book, then click HERE for amazon and purchase the book, or go to BBC iPlayer HERE if you are in the UK. For US watchers, you will unfortunately have to wait for an airing date to be confirmed.