Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1571 in DVD
• Released on: 2009-09-07
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 90 minutes

Synopsis
A pitch-black hospital comedy emerging from the mire of the mundanity, bureaucracy and absurdity of health care with warmth, wit and laughter.

Ward B4 is a backwater of an NHS hospital – a depository for dying and discombobulated geriatric women. Beset by C. diff, form-filling and self-obsessed consultants, the minimal staff struggle with the daily grind – blithely enduring the absurd hurdles and obstacles of the system and getting through each day on cake and cigarettes. Sister Flixter is in charge of the ward, but drowning in paperwork, neuroses and relationship issues, she relies on the graft and common sense of return-to-practice nurse Kim Wilde, the lowest form of life on the ward – after the lino. The patients, of course, are the least of their problems, especially compared to the jargon-fueled, stool-obsessed, ward doctor, Pippa Moore, and a new male matron who is determined to do things by the book.

“piercingly weird, coldly plausible, heartbreaking and hilarious.”--The Times
“bleak but brilliant” Metro
“relentlessly funny” The Mirror
“Moving, darkly funny and truthful in the way that it skewers the ludicrous, labyrinthine bureaucracy... Unmissable” The Guardian

Customer Reviews

The show we all theought The Office was.
I have to say from the start that I am only 3 episodes into this on TV, but already it is in my opinion among the best TV shows I've ever seen. This may be because I have experience of NHS working from an outside point of view and feel for the staff in real life and this should be part of all nurse training from now on!

The main roles are played with the perfect mix of emotion and comedy timing. The patients, particularly the angry patient in the second episode, just captures the emotional chaos inside the mind of the elderly with more heart than I have ever seen. You laugh at what is going on and then a short cut scene had you desperately fighting for the character.

I think this show deserves to be praised so highly, but feel that the fact it probably won't will only contribute to it's inevitable retrospective praise.

In a day and age when comedy seems to think that it has to live in the realms of terror and the impossible, the most shocking and brilliant humour is actually from the most real and human show.

Breathtaking stuff.

Wow. Seriously, I'm impressed.
Jo Brand as a comedienne has often irritated me, but this is her rejuvenating light. The in situ filiming that is stunningly reminiscient of 'The Office' creates a stunning atmosphere that is only enhanced by Brand's superb fulfilment of her role. Bloody well done. The support cast that well may have started in awe of Brand's persona recovers after after just one episode, despite the slightly obtuse distraction of the faecal matter. Congratulations are surely in order, especially for Brand, having moved on from Mock The Week and Live At The Apollo to a credible BBC sitcom. Felicidades xxx Oh, and what a support cast. Congrats.

Funny and sad at the same time.
Bloody brilliant comedy with a heart. All the cast are excellent, filmed fantastically and unfortunatly a fair representation of the the new 'management by numbers' NHS. God help us all when we get older.