The Cure: Devastating docudrama dares to take a scalpel to our ailing NHS

This excellent docudrama couldn’t be clearer, better acted or more tellingly understated
David Sexton19 December 2019

In today's Queen’s Speech, Boris Johnson was set to promise to deliver an extra £34 billion for the NHS.

In spite of Brexit, the NHS was, as always, one of the key issues in the general election. Our attachment to it is deep and unquestioning. Any criticism of it is seen as treacherous, even heretical.

That makes this excellent 90-minute fact-based drama about the Mid Staffs hospital scandal — and the part played in exposing the hospital’s shortcomings by Julie Bailey, whose mother Bella died there in 2007 — peculiarly significant. It couldn’t be clearer, better acted, more tellingly understated.

NHS hospitals in TV dramas are portrayed as places full of kindness, however overworked the staff may be. The Cure, shockingly, shows us indifference and incompetence, even cruelty and contempt, at work, among medical staff as well as conceited administrators — and it is painstakingly based on the evidence that emerged in a series of reports and investigations, culminating in a public inquiry costing £13 million, chaired by Robert Francis QC.

Indifference: The drama shows another side to hospitals

At 86, Bella Bailey (Sue Johnston) is a lively, humorous grandmother, helping out her daughter Julie (Sian Brooke) at her dog-grooming parlour. But after collapsing, she is taken to Stafford Hospital — and she doesn’t survive. This hospital was just then making cuts to help its application to become a foundation trust and its standards of care had collapsed. It has been estimated that somewhere between 400 and 1,200 more patients died there between 2005 and 2008 than would have been expected for its size and type. When Julie visits her mum, she finds a scene of horror. An elderly dehydrated man is trying to drink water from a flower vase. There are drip bags and other fluids on the floor. People have been dumped in corridors. There are cries of “Help me! Help me please!” in the background. Her mother has been left in a chair, comatose.

Having previously been advised her mother’s condition is manageable, Julie is callously told by a doctor that she’s going to die a painful death and must sign a “do not resuscitate” form. When a nursing assistant drops her and she suffers heart failure, a nurse is brutally unconcerned. “I’m in charge of this ward, I’ll decide when to get a doctor.”

Campaigning: The film follows Julie Bailey's protest movement

There’s a desperately moving deathbed scene, Julie saying to her mother: “They’ll all be waiting for you, they’ll be there for you.” Afterwards she rounds on the hospital that has let her family down so badly. “You lot killed her, you all did, and I’m not going to let you get away with this.”

Julie creates a protest movement, Cure the NHS, and gathers evidence. A tough inspector from the Healthcare Commission, Dr Heather Wood (Georgie Glen) issues a devastating report. But Julie’s campaigning comes at a cost. She receives death threats. A demo erupts outside her café.

“I didn’t think I’d be so hated,” says Julie sadly. She doesn’t blame the whole NHS, she doesn’t want the hospital to close — but she’s seen as the enemy by locals, and by staff anxious for their jobs. Even full vindication by the public inquiry (which resulted in 11 other hospitals being put into special measures) doesn’t change that.

The closing credits warn another “Mid-Staffs” is inevitable. There’s a desperately poignant clip from a home movie of the real Bella Bailey dancing happily. Essential, devastating viewing.

The Cure is on Channel 4, 9pm tonight.

TV shows to watch in 2019

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