Jed Mercurio, Managerialism, Medical Drama and the NHS

What is it about?

This article explores the critique of one British public sector institution (the NHS) articulated through a medical drama aired on another British public sector institution (the BBC). It situates Jed Mercurio’s Bodies in the contexts both of relentless political intervention in the NHS, and of recent NHS scandals. It argues that Bodies is directly indebted to the events of the 1990s Bristol heart scandal, but that it situates the kinds of incompetence and mismanagement that underlay real-life events in Bristol within a fictionalised workspace in which many of the recommendations articulated in the Kennedy Report on Bristol are already in place. In doing so, it anticipates the conclusions of the Francis Report on the Mid-Staffs scandal, several years before the events unfolding in mid-Staffs were exposed to public view.

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Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Why is it important?

In exploring Bodies’ prescient critique of the subjection of the NHS to the strategies of the New Managerialism, this article contributes to the current debate over the crisis in the NHS. It examines both the history of that crisis and its representation in popular culture and in doing so, it suggests some answers to the question: ‘what can popular culture know?’.