ITV1’s medical version of Line of Duty feels like it’s already running out of story

Tom Hughes as Dr James Ford Credit: ITV

Of all the jobs in medicine, being an on-call psychiatry registrar in an understaffed hospital doesn’t sound too appealing. It’s understandable, then, that Dr Tom Ford is having a stressful day in Malpractice (ITV1). He agrees to see a new mother who appears to be struggling with postpartum depression, but is then told he has to conduct an urgent mental health assessment on a floridly psychotic crack-addict who has absconded from the ward while heavily pregnant and needs to be sectioned. Ford also appears to be grappling with problems in his personal life, because he’s a character in a TV drama.

Ford (Tom Hughes, best known as Prince Albert in ITV’s Victoria) rushes the first job so he can attend the second, concluding that the mother is sleep-deprived but has no serious issues and should be sent home. That turns out to be a catastrophically bad decision, and the Medical Investigation Unit is called to look into his actions.

The first series of Malpractice, starring Niamh Algar, was a hit. This is the second, with an entirely new story but the same MIU investigators, Norma Callahan and George Adjei (Helen Behan and Jordan Kouamé). She is steely, he is empathetic. They behave like police officers, interrogating witnesses – Callahan could stride into Line of Duty and wipe the floor with the lot of them – and pulling CCTV footage. I have no idea if this is reflective of real-life medical malpractice investigators. We can assume that the portrayal of chaotic hospital management and out-of-their-depth medics is authentic because the writer, Grace Ofori-Attah, is a former NHS doctor. Actually, anyone who has had experience of a British hospital lately will know all about the chaos and failures of communication.

Jordan Kouamé as Dr George Adjei and Helen Behan as Dr Norma Callahan Credit: ITV

Hughes does a decent job of playing a man under pressure, but he is never likeable. There are no characters to root for, and every doctor here has a touch of arrogance. You can sympathise with Ford’s first decision as he’s pulled in two directions at once, but he then goes on to compound it with lies and dumb choices. His nemesis is Dr Sophia Hernandez (Selin Hizli), a brusque obstetrician who doesn’t seem to know what she’s doing, and you won’t like her much either.

Because this is an ITV thriller, you will be braced for things to take a silly turn in episode two and become fully ridiculous by episode three, but that doesn’t happen. It’s not really clear where the plot is going. After the initial dramatic event, the storyline descends into different departments – obstetrics and psychiatry – trying to blame each other for everything that has gone wrong. This war of words plays out in tetchy work meetings, whistleblowing and buck-passing. It feels like difficult second album syndrome for Ofori-Attah, who knows she has a great premise that could run for several series, but hasn’t quite got a good enough story to make this one compelling.