Blue Friday: The Book of Love

I wrote a post last month about This Is Going To Hurt, the TV adaptation of Adam Kay's bestselling book. I wrote at the time that everything looked set fair for the Beeb's version and, having since watched the whole series, I'm happy to report that my forecast was accurate. There were changes from the book, but these were probably necessary; fortunately, the TV version found a different way to be heartbreaking. And that's important because, whilst the series might have received criticism from some for being too bleak, and with too little humour to offset the darkness, I think it's important that the key message of Kay's book is preserved: the NHS is full of brilliant, talented, dedicated people, working hard to look after us all, often in trying and underfunded circumstances, often working ridiculous hours under enormous pressure. All of this was true before COVID; I dread to think what a pressure cooker an acute hospital must be at the moment. And this takes its toll; in real life, the unrelenting pressure became too much for Kay, and he reluctantly walked away. In the TV adaptation ... well, no spoilers. But an astonishing statistic comes out towards the end that I can't attribute to a published source but have no reason to doubt: one doctor takes their own life in this country every three weeks. Every. Three. Weeks. This is the effect of what the dramatised version of Kay describes as working "in a broken system, under shoddy conditions." I could turn this post into a political piece about how this government are after the NHS, through years of chronic underfunding and privatisation by stealth, contracting bits out to their mates ... but you know that already. Just be ready for them, that's all I need to say on that. The NHS should be sacrosanct but, under this administration, isn't.

Anyway, my first post about this TV series enthused about the excellent soundtrack, and that has been very good throughout. The last episode featured this beauty, from The Magnetic Fields. You might not think it a blue track, but it is to me.