This Is Going to Hurt

Lucy Forbes' This Is Going to Hurt launched on BBC One in February 2022 across seven episodes and won the BAFTA for Best Leading Actor (Ben Whishaw) at the 2023 BAFTA TV Awards. The series was nominated for multiple additional BAFTAs including Best Drama Series, and earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding TV Movie or Limited Series in the U.S. market the same year.

The series is adapted from Adam Kay's 2017 memoir of the same name, a phenomenal commercial success in the UK with over 2.5 million copies sold and Sunday Times Bestseller status for over a year. Kay, a former NHS junior doctor in obstetrics and gynaecology who had left medicine in 2010 to become a comedy writer and stand-up performer, adapted the book himself for the screen. The series is one of the rare BAFTA-winning British dramas in which the autobiographical author serves as the principal screenwriter and remains the central narrative voice across the run.

The cast pairs Whishaw with Ambika Mod (her screen debut, leading directly to her subsequent casting in One Day for Netflix), Michele Austin, Alex Jennings, Harriet Walter and Tom Durant-Pritchard. The series engaged extensively with the working conditions of NHS junior doctors in the 2007-2010 period and became part of broader British public-policy debate around medical-staff burnout, with several real-life NHS specialty colleges releasing public statements in connection with the series' broadcast. Forbes (the showrunner-director) had previously made The End of the F***ing World, and would go on to substantial subsequent commissions including the BBC adaptation of The Listeners.