Medics

This one is a bit of a curiosity from the 90s, though maybe it got better after the '92 series (where I stopped watching). It's best for seeing how some pretty well known Brit actors got started. Jimmy Harkishin (Dev in Coronation Street) has a fairly large role as a not-terribly-nice guy (hey, there's a switch). Tom Baker gives nice support doing a fuddy-duddy version of his Dr. Who role who turns out not to be quite as fuddy as he looks and Peter Wingfield (of Highlander and Queen of Swords) literally throws himself into the role of the frazzled Alex in the first two series. Alex starts off cocky and confident, a golden boy, until he has a disastrous and self- destructive fling with a manipulative psychiatric outpatient, quits medical school and disappears at the end of series one. He comes back well into series two, chastened by probation and a crushing study schedule. Despite Alex's rather bland series two storyline, Wingfield plays him with such doomed intensity that the dramatic end of the series is no real surprise. You can just tell poor Alex is a goner long before the series finale. Apparently Wingfield wasn't the only one surprised to see the character had been recast after he left.

"Medics" has as many plot holes as a beach road in winter season, the production values are crap, the soap opera elements are uninvolving and the characters aren't terribly sympathetic. But it's still worth taking a look (if you can find it) for its unusually unheroic and realistic look at how people in the medical field * really* treat each other under pressure (it's not pretty), for Tom Baker's jolly, but unexpectedly tough, doc and for one of Peter Wingfield's better early performances.