Pyramids of Lithuania, Music of the Deep:M.K. Ciurlionis & the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

"One must carry light within oneself. It has to dispel darkness for all on the road so that they may find light in themselves and walk on rather standing in the darkness" - M.K.Ciurlionis, 1900

Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis was a new name on me. A long one too. The surname is pronounced Chur-lon-iss as I heard a slightly grumpy invigilator tell a visitor when I was attending a retrospective of the artist's work at the Dulwich Picture Gallery recently.

Ciurlionis (1875-1911) didn't live very long (he died of pneumonia aged just 36) and his painting career was even shorter. Every work in the Dulwich show, M.K.Ciurlionis:Between Worlds, was made between 1902 and 1909. It's quite a body of work though. Symbolist painting hovering on the edge of abstraction, full of pyramids, gods, angels, fantasies, fairies, altars and lightning. Ciurlionis, like William Blake or Hilma af Klint, created his own world.

Morning (1903/4)

 

Or at least transformed the existing world to a shape of his own imaginative liking. Born in the spa town of Druskininkai, Ciurlionis immersed himself in both the natural world around him and in Lithuanian folklore. As well as painting he became a proficient pianist (by the age of five!) and studied at the Institute of Music in Warsaw and the Conservatoire in Leipzig.

Halfway through the exhibition there is a small room where you can listen to some of his music and, of course, the curators haven't missed the chance to expand on their theory that the rhythms and textures of his music are reflected in his visual art.

Rex (1904)

Lithuania, we learn, was the last European country to adopt Christianity in 1387. Before then there had been a dominant mix of paganism and pantheism, a worship of the natural world. As things changed Lithuanian folklore, it seems, fused with more Christian beliefs to create a kind of syncretic belief system. Certainly that's how it looks when you consider a work like 1904's Rex.

Rex is a godlike figure. The big white beard is the clear giveaway. He's an omnipotent creator, spirit, and protector and he'll crop up often in the work of Ciurlionis. Elsewhere, the artist will concentrate more on light, be it from the sun or the moon. Sometimes how that light would play on the sea. A sea that, for Ciurlionis, represented infinity and eternal life. Although in Ship, below, the waters look choppy and dangerous. Life looks fraught. I'm reminded of Turner's Snow Storm:Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth.

Ship (1905/6)

News (1904/5)

News, at first glance, appears to be almost entirely abstract but closer inspection reveals a large bird flying over the mountains and, to the mind of Ciurlionis and his admirers, bridging the gap between the heavens and the Earth. In Lithuanian folklore, birds were associated with the soul.

It's a nice painting. I also like Night. Clearly Ciurlionis was familiar with the then popular Japanese prints and possibly also with the nocturnes of Whistler which this painting reminds me of. It shows a figure from Greek mythology ferrying souls across the River Styx into the underworld.

Night (1904/5)

Forest (1906)

Between the fourteenth and the eighteenth century, Lithuanian and Polish histories were intertwined as Russia grew more poweful and, this will sound familiar, began to occupy parts of each country. In Lithuania, 'Russification' took hold. The Lithuanian language was banned in schools and in print. Those that tried to smuggle books in Lithuanian into the country faced the threat of imprisonment or deportment to Siberia.

This history informed the work of Ciurlionis but so did the tumultuous times he lived through. The Russian Revolution of 1905 saw some concessions made to Lithuania (including reversing the ban on the language) but it wasn't until the artist had passed, after the end of World War I, that Lithuania was given it's (brief, at the time) independence.

This means Ciurliunois was reliant on Russian, and Polish, authors and composers in the main as influences. This also, I rather suspect, is why he was so keen to bring what he could of Lithuania into his art, and his music. All that was left for him to use was folklore and tradition. Most of which had been kept alive by the working classes.

Although it's equally possible this is how he'd have chosen to paint anyway. He enjoyed cycles of paintings in which he could tell stories and sure enough several of them are on display in Dulwich. They tackle subjects as big as the creation of the world and use Goethe's colour theory. Musical instruments appear alongside fantastic worlds inspired by the architecture of the ancients. A whole new world is created, Again, it's not too far from William Blake.

Raigardas (1907)

Sometimes he looked closer to home. Raigardas is a popular walking spot near where Ciurlionis grew up but, crucially, one with a folktale attached. Raigardas is said to have been, in the past, a wealthy city whose citizens behaved indulgently and thus incurred the wrath of the god of thunder who punished them, rather harshly you might think, by having the ground swallow them up.

Legend has it that the sunken city comes to life at night and you can hear both the tolling of the bell and the wailing of those stuck underground. It's quite a bleak story for such a pretty painting. It shows that Ciurlionis had a moralistic thrust behind his work as well as a fanciful one. A political one too. The Sorrow series have been read as the artist's commentary on political protests he'd witnessed in Warsaw. The thrusting black forms believed to be representative of protestor's flags.

Sorrow (1906/7)

Daybreak (1906)

 The Zodiac:The Sun is Passing the Sign of Scorpio (1906//7)

 The Zodiac:The Sun is Passing the Sign of Virgo (1906/7)

The Zodiac:The Sun is Passing the Sign of Aquarius (1906/7)

Zodiac:The Sun is Passing the Sign of Pisces (1906/7)

It's a stretch but let's go with it. What we can see with more certainty is that Ciurlionis seemed to be more at home when he was dabbling in more airy-fairy, or ethereal, belief systems. I'm always astounded, and disappointed, when I meet a person who takes astrology even remotely seriously. The letters of Ciurlionis suggest he was one of those people and the fact that he was interested in the idea that zodiac signs date back to ancient Indian vedas doesn't really excuse him but his Zodiac series of paintings are rather lovely.

Probably best enjoyed as art for art's sake without having to worry about your star sign. But then I would say that, I'm a Virgo. I like facts. One fact that nobody seems certain on is who pioneered fully abstract painting. Debate has raged on for about seventy years now. The Estonian art critic Aleksis Rannit, back in 1949, delivered a lecture in Paris in which he placed Ciurlionis in that role ahead of Kandinsky who is more often given that distinction. Before going on to suggest to the audience that Kandinsky had probably been inspired by, or even copied, Ciurlionis.

They certainly both exhibited in St Petersburg salons in 1909 and it is known that Kandinsky invited Ciurlionis to send work for includsion in a Munich show. Though the invitation arrived too late for Ciurlionis. It seems strange, then, that Kandinsky's widow later claimed her husband had never once set eyes on the work of Ciurlionis.

Summer (1907)

The Sun (1907)

I'm torn. For me, Ciurlionis' work, though impressive, is not fully abstract but then neither is all of Kandinsky's. It's a debate I'm not going to find an answer for here and it doesn't seem to be one that particularly concerned Ciurlionis during his shprt life. He was more concerned with Hinduism, Ancient Egyptian sun worship, and the cult of Prometheus.

Best seen in an amazing series from 1909 called SONATA NO.7:Sonata of the Pyramids. In it we can see pyramids and other towering peaks surrounded by palm trees and lit by a selection of suns. Bridges connect worlds on blurred horizons. It is a triumph of the imagination.

SONATA NO 7:Sonata of the Pyramids:Allegro (1909)

SONATA NO 7:Sonata of the Pyramids:Andante (1909)

SONATA NO 7:Sonata of the Pyramids:Scherzo (1909)

SONATA NO 5:Sonata of the Sea (1908)

Another 'sonata', SONATA NO 5:Sonata of the Sea, was completed when Ciurlionis was staying at the seaside resort of Palanga near the Estonian border. After swimming out to sea, the artist had become drawn to the patterns of sand and fascinating plant life below the waves. The sea he's painted looks far too dramatic to be swimming, or observing plant life, in. In fact it seems to owe more than a small debt to Hokusai's The Great Wave (Under the Wave of Kanagawa).

Ciurlionis once commented that the monotony of Lithuanian folk songs reminded him of "the eternal movement of the sea" and how "one hears in them an almost religious longing and unearthly sorrow". Ciurlionis thought a lot about music and art combined and as metaphors for life. He said he imagined "the whole world as a great symphony", the people being the notes and his home town the melody. He'd have surely been pleased that the avant-garde artist and theorist Kazimir Malevich described Ciurlionis as "the most talented member of the Russian School at the beginning of the century".

Ciurlionis, as with many who love music, also appreciated the power of silence. In a letter to his future wife, Sofija, in 1908 he asked her "to listen to silence" and told her he'd "like to compose a symphony from the murmur of the waves, from the mysterious language of the ancient forest, from the twinkling of the stars", and from his own "immense longing". Sweet. He even painted silence.

Silence (1908)

I rather like it. It stands in wonderful contract to his more fantastical, allegorical, and mythical creations. Inspired by the Symbolists, Ciurlionis would reject progress and modernity while at the same time turning out to be one of the most modernist artists out there. He looked back, or sideways, to look forward and if he didn't always reach the levels of transcendence he aimed for he can't be faulted for not trying.

1909's The Altar looks like an architectural caprice but is believed to reference "the seven steps in the theosophical creation of humanity" (the celestial sphere begins on the fourth, keep up!), The City imagines a future architecture which seems to owe a lot of the architecture of the past, while Lightning powerfully captures the brutal force of nature. Or, perhaps, nature gods.

The Altar (1909)

The City (1908)

Lightning (1909)

Fantasy (The Demon) (1909)

They're all great paintings and I don't necessarily feel the need to share Ciurlionis' belief in the supernatural, or higher forces, to enjoy them. In Prelude (The Knight Prelude), the artist has reimagined Vilnius, Lithuania's capital, as if the skyline has been dominated by that titular knight and in Fairy Tale of the Kings he's conjured up a dome, held by a queen, that holds an entire world inside it. Its own sun, its own moon, cities, constellations, and even other worlds. Then it's all pared down again for a sun dappled trip to the beach for some angels.

 

Prelude (The Knight Prelude) (1909)

Fairy Tale (Fairy Tale of the Kings) (1909)

Angels (Paradise) (1909)

Angel (Angel Prelude) (1909)

This word of angels, fairy kings, gods, and queens can get a big D&D, a bit Game of Thrones, a bit Michael Moorcock and none of that stuff, with the exception of Hawkwind, have in the past been a big drawer for me. But, with Ciurlionis, you don't have spend several days of your life watching television (I do enough of that anyway) or leaf through 800 odd pages of, sometimes badly written, fiction.

You get to be the interpreter of his vision. In your own time and at your own pace. The show ends with 1909's Rex. It's pretty big, you can't see that here of course, but it's widely held to be the artist's most celebrated work. Perhaps that is partly down to its size or maybe it's because it's a rare work he made on an actual canvas. I'm not sure. To me it's as good, but no better, than a lot of the rest of his work. That makes it very good. I enjoyed my visit to the world of M.K.Ciurlionis. It was nice for a holiday. I'm not sure I'd want to live there though. Somebody might talk to me about astrology.

 Rex (1909)

These Boots Are Made For Satan.

I'm a gout guy. Yep, one of those dudes who has gout and keeps banging on about it. I've had gout in my big toe (standard), I've had gout in my hand (painful and lasted for fucking ages), and I've had gout, most recently, in my knee (painful but, luckily, fleeting). It's not nice. It's a condition that men fall foul of more than women but some women do get it. Women who have had gout and given birth have reported gout to be roughly as painful as child birth.

And you don't even get a cute baby at the end of it. Plus you can get gout a lot of times. The average amount of times a gout sufferer will have a gout attack is considerably more than 2.4. Thanks to the brilliant NHS staff at King's, and a daily dosage of allopurinol, it's now - mostly - under control but should I have suffered a gout attack in the 14th century there'd have been no allopurinol and there'd have been no NHS.

I may have found myself, especially if I lived in or near Buckinghamshire, visiting a certain John Schorn in North Marston because it is said he had a cure for gout. A cure for gout, it seems, that he'd channeled from God. Last night's London Fortean Society talk, John Schorn:the Rector Who Conjured the Devil Into A Boot, with archaeologist Wayne Perkins at The Bell in Whitechapel was all about Schorn, or Schorne - the spelling varies, his life, and his legacy.

It was quite a long talk and when you consider that not that much is known about Schorn that seems quite risky. Luckily, Perkins was an engaging and compelling speaker, his manner reminded me a little of Stewart Lee, and even when he went off an incredibly lengthy diversion about boots, shoes, and shoe lore he still managed to take most of the, admittedly modestly sized, audience with him.

Schorn was the rector of St Mary's Church in the Buckinghamshire village of North Marston. Studies that Perkins and others have made in and around the church have shown that, before Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, this church would have been very in to superstition and fairy tales. Which, to be honest, is all religion is anyway. That and suppression.

Almost perfectly formed circles engraved into the south facing door were made in the church so that sunlight would seep in to the building at various times of days. Which, before any of us wore watches, was a good way of telling the time and making sure that the various masses took place when they were supposed to.

Schorn, supposedly both a pious and learned man who liked to dress all in red, seemed to lead something of a cult in one of the chapels of the church. It was more ornately decorated than the rest of the church. If you're a fan of Catholic tat you'll know the kind of thing. Best of all, there was a small alcove at ground level in which gout sufferers could poke their foot and be miraculously cured.

I'm a tad cynical about that and my suspicions about Schorn's powers were only heightened when I discovered he'd also claimed to be able to heel toothache and that he could make water appear at will just by banging his staff on the ground. There was a drought at the time so that would have been very useful. The fact that the water produced had miraculous healing powers, of course it did, would not have been sniffed at either.

But Schorn's biggest claim to fame is that, somehow, he managed to conjure the devil himself into a boot. It's not clear how he actually did that but there are plenty of images from the time and the following decades and centuries which show an almost jovial little Satan, sometimes with wings but sometimes not, poking his head out of the boot.

It's even said that Schorn's devil in a boot was the inspiration for the jack-in-a-box children's toy. Following Schorn's death it seems the miracles didn't stop happening. A skeptical view would be that the church needed money and that pilgrimage sites meant pilgrims which meant money. But plenty did believe and many pilgrims travelled from far and wide to visit St Mary's Church and be healed by the ghost of John Schorn.

After the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury and Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk, North Marston became the third most visited pilgrimage site in the whole country. Pubs in the area were opened and many of them were called either The Devil or The Boot. One was even called The Devil In The Boot Inn. The village water pump, to this day, has a carved devil that pops his head up when it fills up with water.

That's him at the top of this blog. Cheeky little chappie, isn't he? Despite never being canonised, Schorn came to be regarded as a saint. A popular, or populist, saint if you will. In the years following his death his remains were moved to St George's Chapel, Windsor and Henry VIII is said to have made a pilgrimage to visit him there.

Schorn was in exalted company in Windsor. Henry VIII himself ended up there as did many other monarchs (Charles I, Henry IV, Edward IV, Edward VII, George III, George IV, and William IV) and various other royal spouses and hangers-on. Elizabeth II is in there now but, alas, Schorn won't get to 'meet' her because at some point room was needed for a more celebrated grave and Schorn, as some "long-forgotten" country vicar, was moved out.

But, to some, Schorn is anything but long forgotten. Admittedly I'd never heard of him until the LFS announced this talk but with the help of imagery from the likes of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Nicolas Poussin, Wayne Perkins was able to bring John Schorn, or Schorne, to life for a couple of hours last night. Although looking at the state of the world now it seems the devil escaped that boot a long time ago.

Thanks to Wayne Perkins and thanks to the London Fortean Society for another fun evening. Thanks also to Dewi, Jade, Paula, and Tim for the devilish company although no thanks to Dewi for asking me to buy him a pint of Fruli strawberry beer which cost an eye watering £7.95! I did - and he can take it as a St David's Day gift. The devil, it seems, is in the details. 

After The Love Has Gone:You & Me.

Nobody gets murdered, nobody gets raped, nobody dies of a drug overdose, and nobody even gets arrested. Compared to most of the television I've watched in recent years You & Me (ITVX, created by Jamie Davies and with Russell T. Davies as one of the executive producers - whatever that means) was incredibly lightweight, some would even say twee, but it carried quite a powerful punch in places. 

An iron fist in a velvet glove! It tells the story, the love story, of Ben (Harry Lawtey) and Jess (Sophia Brown). A young couple living in leafy South London who first meet when they nearly fall in to each other running for, and then missing, the number 23 bus. Ben asks her for a drink - a can on the next bus it seems, they fall in love, move in together, and soon Jess is pregnant with twins.

It's the kind of textbook meet cute you'd expect in a fairly traditional rom-com and, in many ways, You & Me is a romcom but the fact that Ben is telling the story, now on his own, while sitting forlorn in a bus shelter tells you straight away that something has gone badly wrong. It's not long before we find out just what.

Everywhere Ben looks there are memories of what was, and reminders of what should have been. Ben says he's not had a drink because if he started he wouldn't be able to stop. He says he's not had a cry for the same reason. He makes heartbreaking speeches about how unfair life is and there's a really moving scene when he has to tell his twin children about the mother they never got to know.

Linda (Julie Hesmondhalgh), Ben's Everything But The Girl t-shirt wearing mum, is down from Oldham offering emotional support to Ben in the wake of things going wrong and Ben's boss/friend, Dee (Genesis Lynea), thinks that, as a journalist - and one that doesn't seem to do a lot of work, he should write about his experience but Ben's not ready for that.

With Jess gone, Ben's got his hands full bringing up the twins, Poppy (Isabella Tyson) and Jack (Lucas Tyson), and he's certainly not ready to enter into a new relationship as we see on a night out with his friend James (Stevee Davies). James thinks Ben needs to get 'back out there' but Ben is clearly still in love with Jess.

But when he interviews Emma (Jessica Barden), an actor in her first big role something changes in him. It's clear from the off that they like each other. Could she be the one to 'fix' Ben? What's her story? Why does she wear a necklace with Joey written on it and who is Harry and what's his role in her life? We know Ben's story but now we, and Ben, need to discover Emma's?

With three hours to fill it is obvious that the path to true love will not be a straight one. It never is. At times, You & Me relies on a huge number of coincidences to get to the ending but that's not really a criticism. It seems fairly obvious what will happen but it never seems obvious how it will happen. The makers of You & Me make sure they take us for a ride on the ol' emotional rollercoaster and though we know what the correct ending to this story should be we find ourselves wondering if that will ever come to pass.

I enjoyed all the very familiar South London locations (Peckham Library, Tower Bridge, the Trafalgar Tavern in Greenwich, Brockwell Lido, Potters Field Park, Telegraph Hill Park, and was that Frank's Cafe at Bold Tendencies?) and I also loved that lots of scenes took place on the upper deck of a bus (that's the London I live and breath) but I was also impressed with the soundtrack by Vince Pope. I thought it had something of the Johann Johannsson about it, maybe even a bit of Sigur Ros.

Performances all round were excellent. Special mentions should go to Lily Newmark as Emma's sister, Ben Starr as Emma's suitor, Michael Fatogun as an ex-boyfriend of Jess's who may hold the key to something that's been on Ben's mind, and Andi Osho and Clarence Smith as Pam and Charlie, Jess's parents.

Of course, Hesmondhalgh is great but the main plaudits should go to the three young leads. Lawtey, Brown, and Barden are all excellent. Though their characters often seem too good to be true they still remain believable. At least while you're suspended in the drama.

A drama that touches on religion, grief, and closure but, more than anything else, asks the question what do we owe those that are no longer with us and what do we owe ourselves? A drama that asks ourselves what we should sacrifice for love. As You & Me moves on it doesn't stop piling on the pathos and it does it very effectively. What a lovely thing it was to see a drama in which people suffering deep and lasting emotional pain were still able to show humour and kindness to each other. People like that deserve love. But will they get it?

Somebody Get Me A Doctor:Maternal.

Dr Maryam Afrida (Parminder Nagra), Dr Catherine MacDiarmid (Lara Pulver), and Dr Helen Cavendish (Lisa McGrillis) are all returning to work following periods of maternity leave during the Covid lockdowns. With the NHS as it is at the moment, they are of course thrust straight on to the front line and, for various reasons and to various degrees, they all find it causes problems.

Anyone would. But to do it while juggling with child care concerns at the same time makes it even more difficult and it's not just child care that Maryam (or Maz), Catherine, and Helen have to worry about. There's stuff, different stuff, going on in their private lives too.

Maternal (ITV/ITVX, created and written by Jacqui Honess-Martin) tells their story and if it starts a bit slow (during the first two or three episodes I must admit I was not always fully captivated, that the action jumped around a bit too much and that the soundtrack sometimes felt intrusive and ill judged) then it makes up for as it develops. It eventually becomes moving, very moving, and incredibly tense.

It's worth sticking with. Maz's partner is Raz (Abhin Galeya). It's always nice to have a partner whose name rhymes with yours but Raz is not always the most sympathetic or empathetic and as Maz, we learn, has been through some tough times, that seems what she needs. She's still struggling with a colleague, Simon (Dean Ridge), who she thinks does his job badly. In turn, he's not convinced she's doing hers that well either.

Raz seems better than Helen's husband Guy (Oliver Chris). Helen are Guy are having counselling and it's not going well. There's talk about a lack of physical and emotional connection between the two of them and Guy is keen, perhaps too keen, to point out that he's not talking solely about 'conjugal rites'. He's rude to colleagues and he's rude to patients at times. He also appears to be hitting the bottle pretty hard.

Not great when Helen and Guy are still working together. Catherine's ex, Dr Jack Oliveira (Raza Jaffrey), is also on the ward (it's really quite incestuous this hospital but maybe doctors are so busy they are bound to end up in relationships with each other). Jack's a bit of a smoothie, something of a high flier. He seems a bit oily.

Catherine's also being visited by the father of her child, Lars (Alexander Karim), and he brings his wife Brigitta (Carolin Stoltz) with him. Being Swedish, it seems, this is less of a problem than you might imagine for Lars and Brigitta. Neither of them had even been aware of the child's existence until very recently but they soon agree, with only the odd mild look of disapproval from Brigitta, to take the child on as much as they can. Despite already having their own kids.

Maybe that's how it rolls in Scandinavia but it did seem quite a leap. Don't worry though, there's still drama because, if anything, Lars comes up with a plan that goes much further than Catherine had expected. All of them seem to live in nice, if often hectic - normal with kids of course - houses but Catherine's seems the nicest. She's got a big car too and we soon learn she's from a very successful family. She's very driven. Will being a mum hold her back in her career? Will her career hold her back when it comes to motherhood?

Questions, of course, that are very rarely asked of new fathers but questions, of course, that do get asked of mothers constantly. Maternal doesn't shirk how this affects Maz, Helen, and Catherine. Though they all seem reasonably well off, certainly not the case for all NHS staff, they are all bedeviled by different levels of anxiety.

Among the jokes and asides about sleepless nights, treading on their kid's toys, sore tits, and reading The Gruffalo endlessly (and far too many scenes of people going up and down in lifts) there are pointed comments about bureaucracy, clapping for carers (but not treating them better), and how undervalued doctors are in the UK. But not too pointed. Maternal manages to keep an element of soapiness in its heart and though that doesn't necessarily fit with some of the more squeamish images of operations being carried out (I'm a total wuss when it comes to medical stuff and there's way too much blood and guts on show in Maternal) it does help ground the drama in all too human concerns.

Other family members are brought into the drama. Perhaps most dramatically in the form of Helen's sister Debbie (Nicola Stephenson who you may remember as Margaret from Brookside, the one who kissed Anna Friel). Debbie has long standing dependency issues and Guy is letting her problems push him and Helen even further apart.

With all that's going in their home lives, it's a wonder there's time to show anything from the hospital but we're soon treated to a mix of the darkly humorous (a scene featuring a man with distended bollocks is played for laughs but atrophied testicles sound pretty painful to me) and the incredibly moving (cancer patients being moved to palliative care, young men coming into the hospital after being stabbed, babies surviving difficult births, and teenagers potentially not surviving life threatening illnesses).

The first really serious case we're witness to is that of four year old Edward (Dvante Hart) who arrives at hospital with a urinary tract infection and starts to deteriorate scarily quickly. It's a case that ends up haunting Maz and having her question her future in the job but it's not just her that's put under intense pressure. We see Maz, Catherine, and Helen all made to suffer absolutely dreadfully and all of them are forced to make big life changing decisions in which there is never one single entirely satisfactory answer.

As with BBC's recent This Is Going To Hurt, Maternal shows how the stress of working for the NHS affects those that do it not just in their working lives but also in their personal lives. How it's a job you can't simply switch off and how some of the coping mechanisms (in this show:- booze, extramarital sex, and suicidal ideation) may create yet further problems.

The wider cast is good too. You warm to Ridge's Simon as he leans into the empathetic aspects of his job, Cathy Tyson makes a brilliant and powerful speech in a heartwarming cameo and if colleagues and bosses like Tessa (Jennifer Macbeth), Mae (Naomi Yang), Louise (Elizabeth Dulau), and Susan (Julie Graham) feel a little underused (especially when some of them seem to be very capable actors) you can't help suspecting Maternal will be back for a second series and we'll get to know their stories better then.

Though the soundtrack didn't always work there was much of it that did (Khruangbin, Jungle, Little Simz, Pulp, Beyonce, Madonna, Arlo Parks) and, much like a regular hospital appointment itself, I left the show feeling better about it than I did when I went in. If only I could feel so positive about the future of the real NHS.