Edward Easton plays Simon Porter, a fantasist stuck pushing trolleys through the bowels of St Etheldreda’s while convinced he’s on a fast track to the consultant lounge. The show’s joke is that he’s catastrophically wrong: every shortcut he takes lands another patient in theatre and another disciplinary on his file. Susan Wokoma’s Frankie and Claudia Jessie’s Lucy watch the carnage from the porters’ cupboard, trading one-liners sharp enough to slice ligaments. Series one ran three episodes in autumn 2017; a second batch of six arrived in March 2019, adding Daniel Mays as a slippery anaesthetist who becomes Simon’s reluctant mentor.
Dan Sefton, a former A&E doctor, wrote the pilot on night shifts and sold it to Dave when the channel was still best known for repeats of Top Gear. The budget was tight, the sets recycled, and the gurning extras actual medical students paid in sandwiches. Yet the scripts pack enough insider detail, chest-tube jokes and blood-spattered slapstick to make junior doctors flinch in recognition. Rutger Hauer’s final British TV role is the hospital’s cryptic janitor, dispensing koans between floor buffs, a surreal counterweight to Simon’s escalating disasters. When the second series ended without renewal, Porter’s unfinished arc left him exactly where he started: outside the operating theatre, clutching a stolen stethoscope and a forged ID badge.
Production Details
U&Dave / 2 Seasons / 9 Episodes / 2017
Created by: Dan Sefton Camilla Whitehill Lee Coan
Writer(s): Dan Sefton, Lee Coan, Camilla Whitehill
Cinematography: Clive Norman
Main Cast
Susan Wokoma as Frankie
Edward Easton as Simon Porter
Claudia Jessie as Lucy
Rutger Hauer as Tillman
Chris Wilson as Porter
Daniel Mays as Anthony De La Mer
Sanjeev Bhaskar as Mr. Pradeep
Tanya Franks as Jane Bison
James Atherton as Dr. McKenzie
Jo Joyner as Dr. Kelly
Sinéad Keenan as Dr. Bartholomew
Siobhán McSweeney as Alice
