“Right girls,let’s use our brains!” That,essentially,kicks offMaternal,a British drama about three doctors returning to work after maternity leave.
Maryam (Parminder Nagra – Jess fromBend it Like Beckham) is a paediatrics registrar with two children under two and a teacher husband. She’s not sleeping – because toddlers,d’uh – and has been thrown straight back onto the ward,where elation and despair are daily visitors. She’s also been saddled with a junior doctor who undermines her at every turn.
Lara Pulver,Parminder Nagra and Lisa McGrillis star in Maternal.ITV Studios
Next up is Catherine (Lara Pulver),a forthright surgeon in a sea of arrogant blokes. She’s a single mum of a nine-month-old daughter,happily declares “we’ve all killed someone” and has her friends’ backs. Her mum is too busy to help,so she cycles through a selection of nannies to keep her ambition of being a consultant alive.
Helen (Lisa McGrillis),meanwhile,has three kids,the most amazing breast pump I have ever seen,and a marriage in severe crisis. Her husband has cheated (of course) and does little to ease the day-to-day palaver of family life.
The show has been billed as a love letter to women on the front lines of Britain’s National Health Service,juggling work,families and marriages in the shadow of the pandemic. It’s heartfelt without being cheesy,darkly funny in the way medical dramas consider edgy – let’s mention serial killing doctor Harold Shipman! – and gallops along the hospital corridors at a cracking pace.
Parminda Nagra (second from left) plays Maryam,a paediatrics registrar who has just returned to work from maternity leave in Maternal.Supplied
The medical procedures are slick – god,I love the busy work of actors pretending to insert needles,tubes and cutting open bodies – and the women’s camaraderie provides the show’s backbone.
It’s exhausting to watch and to imagine what it must be like for the real-life women in similar situations,but that’s the point. The writers and directors – all women – have put the stress and messiness of mothering and the return-to-work juggle front and centre.
In terms of subject matter – women carrying the mental and physical load of family – it’s not a million miles from the terrific recent adaptation of the bookFleishman is in Trouble (Disney+). Both give an absolutely withering view of the juggle and men’s obliviousness as to what women go through.
Yes,the women in both shows are ridiculously privileged,but the very act of putting their experiences on screen is radical. When was the last time you saw a TV show that featured the lead male character worried about childcare or patronisingly being told to take it easy because they are now a parent? Yes,#NotAllMen in real life and on TV,but have the blokes ofNCIS ever said,“Sorry,can this crime scene wait? I have to do pick-up.”
You don’t have to be a high-flying doctor in stilettos with a Swedish lover and an unsettling amount of neon signage in your house to relate toMaternal. Anyone who has done it knows it’s a hard gig. I remember just sitting at my desk for hours staring into space recovering from the blood-curdling screams at the morning childcare drop-off (the kid’s,not mine).
Maternal is not perfect – some dialogue is a bit on the nose (is anyone joking about giving colleagues blow jobs any more?),some storylines border on soapy and the houses are big and glossy in a way that usually has me rolling my eyes.
But the struggle is real and the juggle is hard. If being a working mum was a circus trick,it would be juggling three soccer balls while walking on a tightrope with no net to catch you. But when you love your job and your family – like the women inMaternal do – it’s worth it.
Maternal screens on Sunday at 7pm on Seven.
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