Arte hospital series: Not even half-goddess in white

Doctor Allison Sutton pulls the lanyard over her head with her service card, then her doctor's coat. She stands half naked in the locker room of the ER in Edinburgh - and is, without passport, without clothes, again Cath Hardacre, nurse. Trembling with tension. Because it dawns on her that she has overestimated herself. That their technical ignorance can cost lives. And she's one of those she wanted to warn so badly, back home in Sheffield.

That's only three months ago. Time enough for Cath to slip. And her own morality with you. From this crumbling erosion of a construct of life tells the four-part BBC miniseries "Do not tell me": a drama about identity theft and clinic deficiencies, which now shows Arte on two Thursdays in a row. And of all people with Jodie Whittaker in the lead role - that she was just the first female doctor at the same time. Whoever marvels at the TV series story is a wonderful gag in terms of impersonation.

That Cath became Ally, from nurse to doctor, well, it turned out that way. As she stood with her back to the wall, she remembered the life of her friend, the emergency room doctor, Allison Sutton, in her lap; she emigrated, leaving her documents behind. For Cath a pack of paper that gives her power: to finally change something - for the patients. And herself and her daughter Molly.

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It is part of the striking brilliance of this story that it raises the question of the cracks in the good of a profession that should not really be about anything else: about helping. Cath is a union affiliate, raised with the conviction to speak out against grievances. When she does, because patients lie in their own piss for hours, are sent home to die or do not even get through, she is thrown out.

The complacency comes into play

In an emergency room five hours away by car in Edinburgh, she hires Allison Sutton as a doctor - without the human resources department googling for her, that's all. It's as if Cath, with her job as a nurse, also leaves behind an attitude: she no longer just responds, she takes over, quite a doctor, in control of her life. Single parent, close apartment, constantly cramped, unreliable ex there - light apartment, childminder in the house, big-hearted colleague-love Andy (Emun Elliott) here.

But Cath's belief in being better than anyone else, both morally and technically, is hardening into complacency. Figures that are actually "the good guys" but are so intoxicated by their own grandiosity that the boundaries of right and wrong are blurred, are among the most exciting, see the TV series "Breaking Bad", see the fate of whistleblower Julian Assange: because they question their goodness themselves.

The groping uncertainty that Cath tries to conceal in the corridors of the emergency room every step of the way, she would easily explain: she is the new. The fact that she suddenly has to pretend to be able to see something on an x-ray, to instruct the correct dose of morphine, to intubate with the right manipulation or to make emergency cuts - it shakes her. And in a dilemma of dependencies. The only handrail that remains to her is her professional ethic friendliness, not to be a pity for anything, "You are one of us," says one of the sisters also promptly.

Suddenly perpetrator

Cath, who never lies. Cath, who considers the Larifari to be inhumane in the health care system, is at once herself the perpetrator. How Jodie Whittacker changes identities between two breaths, and reflects the power act that hides doubt in her facial expressions, is amazing. The camera always close to her face, her breathing.

Until a first fine rip appears in your printer's paper-thin identity - an ideal cliffhanger at the end of the first evening. Sadly, the fact that the German title refers to it as "Do not tell me" puts the focus away from Cath on a counterpart. The original "Trust me" hits Cath's biting effort more precisely. Although the rest of the cast is much more than staffage, it's obvious that this is a one-woman show, rightly so.

Author Dan Sefton and the two directors Amy Neil and John Alexander, who have so far been shaping episodic British TV series, have now put down a quarter-liter, which, despite its final twist, functions as an exciting, complete whole. Does he have to: Whittaker is due to the long-term gig as Dr. Who's out. The emergency has now become a concept: A second season with four episodes is in the works, with a completely new ensemble and setting.

It is probably better that way. The fate of the series would have been a downward spiral of dependencies to the absurd. Far from the core of the moral dilemma. A lie is a lie is a lie. And just damn exhausting.

"Do not tell me" runs on January 31, 20:15, on Arte.