# This Is Going to Hurt (2022)

> A darkly funny, unvarnished look at a junior obstetrics and gynaecology doctor's life on an NHS hospital ward.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/117020

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 7
- Episode runtime: 46 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: comedy, drama
- Created by: Adam Kay
- Network: BBC One
- Cast: Ben Whishaw, Ambika Mod, Rory Fleck-Byrne, Michele Austin, Alex Jennings, Tom Durant-Pritchard, Ashley McGuire, Harriet Walter
- TMDB rating: 8.3/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8681148/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: brisk
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: simple
- Violence: none
- Tone: gallows humour, frank, darkly funny, bleak, sincere

## What critics say

Audiences broadly regard the miniseries as an acclaimed, frank and darkly funny account of life as a junior obstetrics and gynaecology doctor in the NHS.

## Synopsis

This Is Going to Hurt (2022) is a British miniseries created by Adam Kay for BBC One, adapted from the memoir of a former junior doctor. Ben Whishaw stars as Adam Kay, a junior doctor working the obstetrics and gynaecology wards of an NHS hospital, with Ambika Mod as colleague Shruti Acharya and Michele Austin as Tracy, a ward figure who keeps the place running. Adam wants to do his job well and keep some sense of himself, but understaffing, brutal rotas, and the unpredictable emergencies of childbirth keep getting in the way. Each of its seven roughly 46-minute episodes is built from the cramped rhythm of shifts, handovers, and crisis deliveries, with the wider hospital pressing in at every turn. The tone is frank and darkly funny, a gallows humour that refuses sentimentality while still landing real emotional weight about burnout and the personal cost of medicine. Its look is grounded and clinical, a hospital drama rooted in lived experience. Fans of Scrubs and Fleabag, and of frank British public service drama such as Call the Midwife, will find resonance here. Because it is a single seven-episode limited series, it works as a complete, tightly paced watch.

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