Trust Me, I'm A Doctor (Who Isn't)

Trust Me was a series that ran on BBC a few weeks ago. It follows Cath Hardacre (Jodie Whittaker), an NHS nurse, who finds herself suspended from her job after attempting to blow the whistle on someone else. This was actually because there has been a few complaints raised against her, but we never find out the outcome of these. Cath takes on the identity of her friend Alison Sutton, a doctor and gets a job in a hospital in Scotland. As a doctor, under a false identity.

Whittaker, who is probably more famous already as the next Doctor, manages a stellar performance in what is at times a confusing and demanding role, tying the series together. Cath may be one of the most interesting roles written for a woman I have seen. She is a mother, but she is primarily defined in series by her career. While her love and dedication to her child is shown in the series, it is of secondary importance to the overarching story. In a role reversal, the two more important men in her life are more defined as "Cath's love interest" and "Molly's father" than by their own careers or personalities. One of the other prominent female characters, Bridget, is a complex character in her own right. She's revealed to have made a lot of mistakes on the job, is not above falsifying her reports, and has been drinking on the job. She actually shows off one of the downsides of the medical profession, which is known for putting a lot of stress onto it's employees. Cath and Bridget also pass the Bechdel test at several points.

It's possible to read Cath as a hero defined by circumstance, but if you ask me, she was the villain of the series who got away with far too much. Not that I think this is necessarily a bad thing - it is interesting to see a series where bad people do not get caught. However, in this case, I actually think the series would have been stronger if it had ended with Cath being caught, confessing everything in the face of overwhelming evidence. No-one forced her to take a false identity. No-one made her lie, and her motivations seemed to come more from anger at the NHS than desperation at her situation. It's easy to imagine a counter series where an astute young nurse investigates a seemingly-incompetent doctor, only to find out they were pulling one of the biggest cons of all time.