Critic Reviews

Ofori-Attah is a doctor who spent many years working in A&E, and her experience shows. It is the script’s nods to unnerving realties of the NHS that hit hardest.

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.

I do wonder if the MIU would be quite so harsh on the actions of a doctor who had just had a gun waved in her face, but then this is a TV drama. I can also see it becoming addictive.

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.

The dialogue feels realistic and genuine, managing to be populated with legitimate medical terms while still being comprehensible to a general audience. The best part is that all this work to ground the series doesn't get in the way of the thrills - it is a nerve-racking ride from the very start.

Writer Grace Ofori-Attah, who worked in the NHS for 10 years, once again gives the proceedings an air of authenticity without overloading it with the sort of endless abbreviations that eventually made Line of Duty a bit of a joke.

Malpractice might not sublimate the instinct towards sensation quite as effectively as Adolescence, but they are tonal siblings in how they present the spiral of a nightmarish situation.

The new series promises to be as addictive and unsettling as the last, with another good cast and Ofori-Attah still with plenty of material.

It’s early days but series two is showing great potential.

A sort of Sunday night medico-crime BOGOF offer for the viewer, and it works. .... Doctor Lucy is supposed to be a challenged, yet sympathetic, cool character, but I’m afraid she just leaves me cold – like too many of her patients, unfortunately.