The reviews are unanimous in approving and nearly so in tone: most critics find the adaptation of Adam Kay’s memoir both funny and sad, often in the same scene, and praise it for showing the exhaustion and understaffing of a maternity ward without softening anything. The praise gathers around Ben Whishaw, whose prickly, blood-soaked junior doctor is described as hard to like and hard to stop watching. Several critics note that the character’s arrogance and bitterness are left intact rather than sanded down.
Reservations are few and small. The Telegraph finds some of the vulgarity carried over from the book unwelcome, and The Guardian, the coolest of the nine, treats it as a solid addition to a familiar line of unflinching NHS dramas rather than anything new. The Evening Standard is alone in putting Ambika Mod ahead of Whishaw, and Empire is the only one to credit the directors, Lucy Forbes and Tom Kingsley. The spread is narrow and nobody dislikes it.