Brinkworth series Life Support promises to evolve genre with scripted storytelling

5 has ordered a “reinvention” of the hospital access documentary, according to the broadcaster.

Life Support (w/t) is a five-part series taking viewers into one of the UK’s busiest NHS trusts. The title hails from Brinkworth Productions, which also makes fellow blue light show 999: Critical Condition for 5, focusing on the same trust – Royal Stoke University Hospital.

Life Support will join 5’s plethora of blue light programming, and promises to use “new, dramatically inspired, factual storytelling techniques” to tell the stories of medics and patients. Life Support will “reject” the hospital access documentary’s usual tropes of commentary and interviews, according to 5.

Instead, the series will use the serialised intensity of drama to observe the real-life pressures of the NHS. Life Support will track a ‘cast’ of patient and medics’ personal journeys across multiple episodes from numerous departments and wards across the entire hospital. The series will chronicle patients from the minute they are brought into the hospital system, through the immediate aftermath and into recovery.

It will also be edited in a way that feels more akin to a medical scripted series, with insights from real text messages and personal reflections as well as employ drama methods such as cliff hangers and music choices.

The series was ordered for 5 by consultant editor for commissioning Guy Davies who described the doc as “ambitious and unpredictable” and a “radical reinvention of medical documentaries”.

“We wanted to find a way of taking what viewers love most about the hospital dramas like The Pitt and pull that emotion and intensity into the premium factual space,” he added. “We’re determined to create a new and irresistible type of storytelling in this most popular genre.”

The 5 x 60-minute series is exec produced by Susanne Curran, Xander Brinkworth and Malcolm Brinkworth for Brinkworth Productions. Bart Cope is the series director, and Tom Wilde is the series producer.

Malcom Brinkworth added: “Life Support (w/t) will fuse the rawness of real medicine with the narrative force of character led drama – a cross-hospital series where every choice matters, every case lingers, and every story stays with you long after the credits roll.”