From Holby City to Casualty, we've never been short of medical dramas to watch on TV. With the NHS buckling under ever-mounting pressure and strikes from staff flooding the news, a new drama from ITV turns its attention to three mums as they return to work as doctors.
What is the plot of Maternal?
Medical drama Maternal will span six episodes and follows three female doctors as they return to post-pandemic frontline medicine after maternity leave and find themselves balancing the intense demands of the NHS and motherhood.
We'll meet Paediatric Registrar, Dr Maryam Afridi (Parminder Nagra) who is full of doubt that she can cope with the emotional demands of treating children now that she has her own; Ms Catherine MacDiarmid (Lara Pulver) a single mother and successful surgeon determined to be one of the boys in the macho world of surgery; and Dr Helen Cavendish (Lisa McGrillis) a Registrar in Acute Medicine, who is wrestling with a self-prescribed role that sees her mothering everyone in her life.
According to ITV, "Maternal explores working motherhood with wit, warmth and humour and offers a unique perspective on our beloved, overstretched NHS, and the people who hold it together. Sometimes."
Maternal cast
The leading actresses of Maternal include Parminder Nagra (Bend It Like Beckham, DI Ray, Blacklist), Lara Pulver (The Split, The Alienist) and Lisa McGrillis (King Gary, Mum).
Maternal trailer
Fancy finding out a bit more about the show? Check out the trailer below...
Maternal release date
Maternal will air on ITV1 on Monday 16th January at 9pm. The full series will be available on ITVX once the first episode has aired.
Yours talks to Parminder Nagra
"These are human beings first and foremost, they're not robots. They have thoughts and feelings," Parminder Nagra, who plays Dr Maryam, tells us from her home in the USA. "Yes, they have a job to do. And they took an oath, to uphold whatever they're doing but they are also living and breathing human beings that have families and work incredibly hard and have to juggle the things that these women are juggling within the show. When you say NHS, there's the institution, right? Well, who's in the NHS? In the show, we're saying 'Here's a doctor and her name is Maryam. Yes, she works for the NHS but her name is Maryam. And here's Catherine and here's Helen. And this is what this microcosm is dealing with.'"
Motherhood and more specifically, the struggles of working motherhood are at the heart of Maternal. "The juggle is real, it is really real. In the first scene where you meet Maryam, she's wondering 'What if I really like going back to work?' and feeling guilty about that. But I suppose the journey of all those characters is that, what if one makes the other one better? It's not either-or," Parminder says.
"What is right for you as a person and not what is right for everybody else. I don't even think that's just down to motherhood, actually, I think that's down to whoever you are. You have to really try and listen to where you're at in life and what you can give energy to and knowing that you might have a limitation at this point. 'If I can't give my all to something, and feel guilty or terrible about it, then I'm no good to anybody.' I think the core of all of these characters is not to lose their sense of self, and that their sense of self aids them in being better parents."
In the series, we watch Maryam as she struggles to handle the emotional demands of treating children now she's a mum. Remembering one harrowing scene in the first episode, Parminder remembers: "It was interesting when we did that scene because it was quite triggering for a lot of people in that room, actually. And it's funny because someone asked me 'Is that just all in a day's work? Or do you actually take something like that home?' And I think anybody in that room could still feel the pain of losing someone which I think everybody's experienced."
Although the topics are heavy in the show, it's not all serious. "The thing that really attracted me to Maternal was the humour in there and the drama of it, so it allowed me to do all of it. I do think it's important to have humour because I think that's real life, you can be going through the darkest moment in your life and then something will happen that will crack you and you'll be laughing the next second."
Parminder is no stranger to medical shows, having starred as a doctor in many of her previous roles for shows such as ER and Fortitude. "I've played a few doctors before, it seems to be my niche!" she smiles.
Living in the States, Parminder is all too aware of how lucky we are to have the NHS here in the UK. "I got a bill the other day, and I just went for a basic blood panel, it was just making sure everything was ticking over. And because the insurance questioned it, I thought, 'God, I'm so glad I'm not unwell.' But for the people that are unwell, and then to get a bill like that, I think that would make you even sicker because now you're so stressed out thinking, 'How the hell am I going to pay this bill?'"
"The biggest difference when I encountered the healthcare system here was the amount of paperwork I had to sign before I even got the help. Even when I was giving birth actually, it was like, 'Can you sign this?' 'Can you sign that?' And I'm like, 'Can we not just do this afterwards?' It's all to do with the liability and all of that stuff that goes hand in hand with a lot of the stuff here."
As well as pining after a good fish and chips from back home, it's the good old British humour that Parminder misses. "There's a real shorthand with me not having to explain a joke. N o one no one's saying 'What does that mean?' And then I'm spending five minutes explaining it and it's just not funny anymore. But I love that. It's just a bit dry and a bit sassy, isn't it?"