Green Wing
Watch on: Channel 4.com (UK); Fubo, Roku, Tubi & more (US)
Another TV hospital where you’d be lucky not to end up as a patient, the staff of the East Hampton are… distracted, to put it mildly. Mostly by their love lives, or by anaesthetist Guy Secretan’s wastepaper-bin-on-head game ‘Guyball’, or by their HR manager’s deep, deep weirdness (Michelle Gomez turned up to 11), or by any number of other odd events going on in their bleached corridors.
Green Wing is a Channel 4 comedy that’s part anarchic sketch show, part sitcom, from the creators of Smack the Pony. With a great cast including Stephen Mangan, Tamsin Grieg, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Mark Heap, Michelle Gomez and a pre-Oscar win Olivia Colman, its two series that ran from 2004 to 2007 are strange, funny and unlike anything other medical show around.
Bodies
Watch on: BritBox (UK); not currently available to stream in the US
If audiences felt squeamish about This Is Going To Hurt, they may wish to avoid BBC drama Bodies. It’d be a pity though, because this 2004-2006 hospital drama is one of the best there is. Written by Line of Duty creator Jed Mercurio based on his experience as a hospital doctor, it stars Max Beesley as a young registrar in an obs and gynae ward that’s just like any other workplace – except that here, human error, arrogance, laziness and PR-led management bullshit, lead to patients dying.
Keith Allen, Patrick Baladi and Neve McIntosh also star, in this unflinching look at the early noughties healthcare system (it’s different now of course. After over a decade of underfunding, things are much worse). Two series were made, and roundly held up by the medical community as being on-the-money.
