Since last week's Heartbeat didn’t involve many minutes in the OR I bet we were quite excited to see if the producers actually lived up to the expectation of creating a medical drama series. And indeed we got what we asked for. Not only that, but also loads of Alex Panttiere’s (Melissa George) personal life and of course some great medical time in the OR. Can’t wait for the next episode, the show itself is genuinely interesting and fast-paced!

CHARACTERS TO WATCH FOR: I suppose there are only a few main characters in the show anyway, so the people you’d be watching for are Alex and Pierce. Their relationship is so sweet (we are team Pierce!) and he is totally up for whatever Alex wants, let’s admit it, we all like him and we hope they end up together.

REAL OR NOT RATING: ***

1 being the worst, 5 by being the best. 

REAL: How the real world works:

• Doctors operating with the music on. That is very realistic and once I knew a doctor who would play hard rock while performing surgeries (quite cool, don’t you think!?).
• Doctors having therapy, well that is pretty normal, because doctors are humans too.
• Patients with weird conditions will appear out of nowhere. Well, it’s not just that. It’spractically every day life of a doctor, especially when you deal with massive, lifethreatening surgeries, there will always be that one person with the weird condition you
  will try to treat.

FAKE: Cringe worthy scenes that would never happen:

• Doctors operating while having personal issues. Normally, while you have therapy sessions you are not cleared for operating and surgeries. So the fact that Alex is not only on therapy, but operating and dealing with something new (her patient had a rare disorder and the surgery was supposed to be a one-off) is not realistic. Get your business sorted first, lady!
• Alex’s patient Sam being okay with dying. That is not very likely to happen, and even so if it is, doctors would have spent a little more time talking to the patient about the risks and things that might or might not happen during the surgery. They will not just rush you into the OR, promise!
• Sam’s blood tube exploding during the ‘earthquake’ while the doctors were performing this surgery (one in a lifetime) and they are all stressed out. It was basically a mess. The whole situation is not very realistic anyway. First, the decision to proceed with something like that should be well thought of, not just ‘right, let’s move to the OR then!’.

I'm Ginny, blogging from Manchester, UK. I've been a Biomedical Scientist for 2 years now. I'm a graduate of Manchester Metropolitan University and University of Chester.