Malpractice; Ruby Wax: Cast Away

“I thought it was terrific, a fast-paced, multi-layered and, praise be, believable thriller. The medical drama is a well-ridden horse but this feels like it has something new to say, which is almost certainly because the writer, Grace Ofori-Attah, used to be a doctor. She has channelled the white-hot molten stress of her time in A&E into her writing and it is conveyed brilliantly by Niamh Algar as Dr Lucinda Edwards.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Malpractice has most of the necessary ingredients to be another Sunday night ITV drama success. The team successfully recreate the atmosphere of an NHS hospital under extreme pressure. Rather cleverly, they also manage to combine the classic elements of a hospital drama with those of a police procedural, as if Casualty found itself in a collision with Line of Duty. Malpractice is thus a sort of Sunday night medico-crime BOGOF offer for the viewer, and it works.”
Sean O’Grady, The Independent

“Malpractice plunges us into the unforgiving world that today’s doctors work in. Intricately plotted and beautifully, leanly written by Grace Ofori-Attah, who spent 10 years as a doctor in the NHS, it stars Niamh Algar as Dr Lucinda Edwards – whose only averagely stressful life and career are derailed when an overdose victim dies in her care. Later in the series the focus broadens and the plot thickens (and periodically becomes unbearably tense) to make it more of a thriller, but it doesn’t lose touch with the central theme.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“We knew things were chaotic in Britain’s overworked A&E departments, but I had no idea emergency medics are expected to disarm gunmen. When the alarms go off in Malpractice, a preposterous five-part hospital melodrama, every doctor has to run into the firing line. This sort of thing must happen every hour, because the police didn’t bother turning up, not even later to make routine enquiries.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“You will need to suspend your disbelief on occasion but what raises Malpractice above ropey thriller fare is the quality of the acting. Algar is excellent in the lead role as a medic who appears capable but is falling apart at the seams, while Scott Chambers stands out as the idiosyncratic Oscar, a junior doctor who appears to idolise Lucinda.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“Ruby Wax: Cast Away is downright inexplicable. At first, this celeb-on-a-desert-island format seems to be nothing more than an excuse for the 70-year-old comedienne to rabbit on about her favourite subject — herself. But the raw and shocking extracts from her memoir of treatment for depression, published in Saturday’s Daily Mail, make it plain that her mental illness is severe.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail