Channel 5 is set to air a new hospital access documentary-style drama titled Life Support, a five-part series that employs techniques, structure and emotional intensity typically associated with scripted television to present real life in a high-pressure medical environment.
Viewers will be taken into one of Britain's busiest NHS Trusts, Royal Stoke University Hospital, following patients, their families and staff through some of the most challenging and emotional moments of their lives.
A Deeply Immersive Experience
The series will track individual journeys from the moment patients are brought into the hospital system through to the aftermath and the days or weeks of recovery. A synopsis teases that viewers will be taken on a "deeply immersive experience" as the episodes unfold.
"Some patients will ultimately heal and recover but are changed forever; others will face life-altering battles that redefine their futures. And those who care for them will be changed too, with those ongoing and affecting stories being just as important," the synopsis reads.
"Bringing the serialised intensity of drama into observing today's real-life high-pressure NHS, this series delivers an emotionally charged, deeply immersive experience."
Rejecting Traditional Tropes
The series is rejecting traditional tropes of medical shows and how staff save lives, such as commentary and interviews, instead using a reinvented form of storytelling. It will look and feel like a television drama, employing cliff hangers, characterisation and editing to highlight the emotional highs and lows for all involved.
A description continues: "It will track a 'cast' of patients and medic's personal journeys across multiple episodes, departments and wards across an entire Trust, digging deeper with patients and their families' stories and making the connections with nurses and clinicians' own lives and feelings as they fight to save lives, in a way conventional factual programming never could."
Gaining insight from messages, texts and personal reflections within scenes, Life Support's ambition is to capture the dramatic intensity of medical storytelling in real life.
Ambitious and Unpredictable
Speaking about the drama, Guy Davies, Consultant Editor for Commissioning at Channel 5, said: "Life Support is ambitious and unpredictable, a radical reinvention of medical documentaries.
"We wanted to find a way of taking what viewers love most about the hospital dramas like The Pitt and pull that emotion and intensity into the premium factual space.
"We're determined to create a new and irresistible type of storytelling in this most popular genre."
It is not yet known when the drama will air on Channel 5.
