People (I may mean men) will say that ITV’s new hospital drama is soapy, and it’s true that in the first episode, a doctor attempts to have sex with her colleague in a stockroom, paper towels and boxes of latex gloves flying. The same people may also think, with some justification, that it is clichéd: snooty male professors have been a staple of on-screen hospitals ever since Doctor in the House, that great hit of the 1950s. But don’t be taken in. Beneath its suds lies something a bit more edgy. In essence, Jacqui Honess-Martin’s series demands to know just what it might take for a woman to make it as a doctor, particularly if she has decided to have children.
Though it’s called Maternal, it has nothing to do with midwives, and nor is it set in a labour ward. But it is about three mothers, newly returned to their hospital jobs after maternity leave: Maryam (Parminder Nagra) is a paediatrician, Catherine (Lara Pulver) is a general and trauma surgeon, and Helen (Lisa McGrillis) is a registrar in acute medicine.
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