User Reviews

I can appreciate some skepticism from reviewers when watching this drama. Mette Fredsted Gram's review however seems altogether unfairly harsh and so i put forward my review. I have never written a review but here we go...

Firstly, compared to other a&e dramas such as Casualty, Critical is the most accurate when it comes to procedures and interventions. I have seen some of these completed on real people and i must praise the writers for taking the time to get this right.

Critical is a drama based in a 'major trauma center' where an hour long episode (including adverts) centers around the golden hour of trauma treatment for one patient. As each episode takes this format, writers use staff conversations to tell the story of each staff member.

I do wish hospitals would have the funds to spend making each A&E department look like the amazing suite in which Critical is based. This is the most unrealistic part of the drama!!

In the real world trauma jobs such as the ones featured in this series are thankfully not everyday occurrences. This means that when these jobs do arise, nerves will be apparent and perhaps the writers wanted to use this human emotion to let us care about the characters. We must acknowledge that Critical is primarily a drama designed to entertain and so these tensions are exaggerated to keep the audience in suspense.

Actors and Actresses of the drama portray the team spirit of a medical team well. The use humor to deal with stressful situations but the true emotion of the character is clear.

All in all i think Critical is worth a watch and worth the 10 stars awarded not the 1 that one reviewer has stated. I cant wait for the next episode.

I came here after seeing Line of Duty (which I rate 10/10) from the same creator. I knew it was a medical show and having seen House and others, I knew what I was getting into.

The problem with this show is the same problem with many medical shows. They're procedurals. Every week you get a new patient who is treated and released by the end of the episode. It's a formulaic format, even if they come up with new and original injuries every week.

Because the patients are disposable characters and story lines, the show needs continuity, so it finds it in office romances, gossip and office politics. This creates a reversed situation from serials. Serials have a main story arc that runs throughout the season and the little gossip, romances and love interests are the side dish.

For example, you tune in to Line of Duty (same creator: Mercurio and same star, Lennie James) and you're curious as to what the next step is for the Gates investigation. You're curious about the professional work, not the gossip.

Here it's the opposite. Since you can't tell who the next patient is, you're only left with gossip and office romances that have continuity. There is some office politics and bureaucratic power plays, but they're so minor that no one could care.

There's not enough gossip to keep it interesting for people that like Grey's Anatomy and there's not enough continuity for everyone else to tune in. I myself don't care for the office romances and politics, and since patients only last an episode, there's no reason to care about them either.

There's no way around this in a medical show. House MD goes around this and makes it about ethics and hard choices. But here the patients are slabs of meat and can't say or do anything.

People simply prefer shows with more continuity now. That's why In Treatment worked because it's continuous, same patients, same cases. A conveyor belt of patients gets boring quickly.

That's what happened to this show, even though everything else was very, very good.

The overall story isn't that bad. Well, it's not good either, but I've seen worse. But I don't recall ever having seen a show THAT unrealistic, without it having been on purpose. "Follow the drama at a state-of-the- art Major Trauma Centre", they proclaim. Well, state-of-the-art Major Trauma Centre, with incompetent doctors. "Doctors" who apparently have no medical training what so ever. Shaky hands, bad stress handling, mid-surgery discussions, staff nearly puking, the list goes on. The doctors and nurses just generally seem like they have no idea what they're doing. Like every day is their very first day on the job. Or just their very first meeting with the health care industry in general.

At first I thought that it must be a post-apocalyptic scenario where none of the "doctors" had medical training, but were forced to a "learning by doing"-approach to safe mankind. Like maybe they were a mere 20 people left on earth, and therefore had no other choice than to try to save their dying race, despite their lack of medical training and bad motor skills. That would have been a much better show.

This show cannot be taken seriously. It's just THAT bad. What were they thinking, when they made this? Have they ever been at a hospital, even? Or met a doctor?

No real doctors would ever act like that! Any normal functioning person will see right through this. I really don't understand why nobody has stopped this show before it happened.

This is by far the best television show ever since "The Wire", the best show ever on the screen. Lennie James makes the show..His acting in this show should win him many awards along with the rest of the people. Show 8 was simply amazing, amazing acting, just so emotional.I watched it three times. I wish they would sell this show in the US. I get my copies of the show from over seas but you guys real need to put this show on in the US, you would make a mint. Don't't know why it isn't... could be on HBO or another channel. I watch these several times. There is not more to say then if you could give a higher score then 10 I would.

This show has just begun airing in Australia and I can say, without a doubt that I am hooked! To watch outstanding acting using realistic medical language, in real time and having realistic human emotions and reactions is truly refreshing. So many other medical shows feature the alpha male (or female) arrogantly performing difficult or first time procedures and reviving patient with only badly performed CPR and shouting "c'mon goddamit!

As for the review posted by Mette Fredsted Gram, I would love to know how long she has been an emergency trauma Doctor? How lucky she is to be able to perform life and career threatening procedures that she has never done before without feeling remotely nervous!

Congratulations to Jed Mercurio on writing yet another outstanding television show, I just wish there was going to be a second season.

At first I thought this would be great but it's so very not! The acting is terrible and the script us worse!... Character development is practically none existent and it seems we're supposed to automatically know the characters and their relationships. It tries to give off a sense of urgency but the slow moving characters and very 'slow off the mark' acting responses gives a different impression... It's like they're trying to give dramatic pauses but are completely missing it!

I quit watching after one episode with a pregnant woman who got shot.. One of the doctors (or nurses) said they were upset about it.. There was zero indication she was upset!.. Everyone is so stone-faced and their 'emotional' reactions are so forced and so fake!

For a high tech trauma unit the doctors are so very low tech!

First of all, why would employees at a state-of-the-art medical facility take care of critical patients without wearing a surgical mask, gowns, and shoe covers? This is basic infection control. Anyone who has ever worked in the medical field knows what they're doing in this show violates all ethical considerations.

Secondly, trying to hit up on each other and eating snacks in the treatment room? That would last about 5 minutes in a regular hospital, and that's not talking about a critical trauma unit. We can't even have a bottle of water at the desk on a regular hospital floor when we're doing our charting. Safety concerns, infection control, and bureaucratic hospital nonsense developed by people who have often never worked on a floor or been away from it for years prohibit us from doing so.

Third, where are all the other patients and associated staff? How the heck can five people run a code? I've been a nurse. This is crap. Where are the nurses? Doctors don't start peripheral IVs. Why is it so dark in the OR? I've been in several of them, and they were never darker than my bedroom.

A little bit of a spoiler here: why in the world wouldn't they immediately intubate a patient with burns covering 65% of their body? Are these people from another planet? I've never worked in a burn unit and even I know one of the first things you do is intubate because of edema caused by smoke inhalation.

The actors played their characters well, but the writing was horrible. Didn't they have a medical consultant for this show?

No wonder it crapped out after only one season. They have great story lines, but as far as the medical part of the show is concerned, it's crap. Anybody with any kind of medical experience knows this. If you work in the emergency department, you cover your shoes, wear a gown, glove up, don a mask, & cover your hair when providing patient care in the trauma bay -- because if you don't you're going to end up with blood somewhere, and that exposes you to anything the patient might have as well as risking them getting whatever you have if there's some kind of infectious process going on in your body and you don't know it. This is a fundamental concept of healthcare.