From how to who: accuracy and authenticity in the portrayal of the medic in TV drama.

Abstract

A grimy bedroom in East London. A pregnant woman lies gasping for air, her throat constricted by the effects of diphtheria. The nurses in attendance wipe her sweatdrenched face. I enter the room, my doctor’s bag in hand. I assess the situation and conclude that an emergency tracheotomy is required to save the woman and her unborn child. The nurses comfort the patient, as I prepare the scalpel. The woman’s rasps become more desperate. I spread the skin of her throat and press the scalpel to the flesh, ready to slice. A voice is heard nearby. ‘‘And . . . cut.’’ This is thankfully not a command to proceed, but an instruction to cease. My patient’s breathing instantly revives. We are on the set of a TV drama. The voice belongs to my director, and I am an actor portraying a fictional doctor called Patrick Turner. My name is Stephen McGann. For more than 30 years, I’ve worked as an actor in British film, TV and theatre. Recently, I’ve been privileged to play a GP in the hit BBC period medical drama, Call the Midwife, set in the poor Poplar district of East London during the early years of the NHS. Dr Turner is an overworked but enthusiastic practitioner on the front line of post-war urban health. The series is enormously popular – viewed by more than 10 million people each week, and sold to almost 200 territories worldwide. The medical stories featured are not confined to childbirth but embrace wider social issues such as infectious disease and the health consequences of deprivation. My fascination with the role is not simply artistic. I love to explore the relationship between medical science and the wider society it serves. While working on Call the Midwife, I completed an MSc in Science Communication at Imperial College London – with a particular interest in narrative representations of science in media. Playing Dr Turner has given me some interesting insights into questions regarding the way popular culture portrays medics and medicine. For instance: how do dramas like Call the Midwife ensure sufficient medical accuracy and authenticity? Are they successful? And by what, or whose, criteria should success be judged? It might be tempting for professionals to measure effectiveness of medical portrayals purely in terms of a narrow procedural accuracy. Yet I suggest that the real communicative power of drama lies in a wider sense of dramatic truth, or authenticity of portrayal. How the TV medic depicts something is only a part of the story, albeit an essential one. More important is establishing a belief in who this medical character is, and why their actions matter. This is crucial to achieving full engagement with the medical themes, characters and outcomes shown – without which all procedures are meaningless. To explain, I’ll outline some of the specific methods we use at Call the Midwife to ensure procedural accuracy, before discussing wider ideas of dramatic character and story authenticity. Issues of medical accuracy in Call the Midwife begin at script development stage, when series writer Heidi Thomas researches possible story lines. The drama was originally based upon the memoirs of a midwife – Jennifer Worth – who practised in East London in the late 1950s. However, the series long since departed from Worth’s accounts – with all plots now created by Thomas and inspired by period Photo courtesy: BBC/Neal Street Productions.