Nobody warns a junior doctor that the hardest shift of their career might also be the funniest thing that happens to them all week — This Is Going to Hurt sits in that contradiction and refuses to blink.
What is This Is Going to Hurt about?
The series follows a junior doctor working the labour ward of a British hospital, where the rhythm of the job swings without warning between farce and crisis. One moment plays as pure comedy — the absurd bureaucracy, the dark humor staff use to survive a night shift — and the next turns into something far heavier, a delivery that goes wrong or a decision made in seconds with consequences that last much longer. The show doesn't separate these registers into different episodes; they sit inside the same scene, sometimes the same line of dialogue. Just as much attention goes to what the job costs outside the hospital walls, tracing how the hours and the weight of the work follow the doctor home and reshape everything waiting there.
About the cast
Ben Whishaw leads as the junior doctor at the center of the ward, with Ambika Mod as a colleague navigating the same brutal rotation, and Alex Jennings and Harriet Walter among the senior figures whose presence shapes how the hospital actually runs.
Context & significance
Adapted from a memoir written by a former NHS doctor, the series draws its tone directly from a book that became known for refusing to sentimentalize hospital work — comedy and horror reported from the same shift, sometimes the same hour. Lucy Forbes directs across the run, keeping the labour ward as the show's single, unbroken setting rather than widening the frame to other departments, which lets the tonal whiplash build entirely from what happens in one place under sustained pressure.
Watching This Is Going to Hurt on Ktime
This Is Going to Hurt is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, so the series can be watched fully in Farsi or with Farsi text over the original English performances. Access requires only a free K-Time account — no cost to browse or sign up — on a platform built with a Farsi-first interface for Persian-speaking audiences wherever they've settled.