Healing hearts

Transplant puts a Syrian refugee in the heart of a Canadian hospital for a compassionate immigrant tale on DStv.

- GENEVIEVE TERBLANCHE

What genre is more perfect than a classic medical drama to deliver the message: be wary of first impressions – and to keep asking questions and listening? For years, med dramas have been emphasising how important it is to get the whole story, for reminding us that people lie (and explaining why), and telling us that treating people a certain way based on an assumption can be deadly.

Medical drama series Transplant (2020-now) sets up both its audience and its characters to jump to all sorts of conclusions in its first action-packed episode on Monday 30 November at 20:50 on Universal Channel (*117). And it uses that to tell an exciting hospital-based story and expose assumptions about immigrants (both documented and undocumented) and refugees. Its story puts our brains through a MRI scanner to spot those lurking mental cancers that have taken root through years of dehumanising TV shows and political fearmongering that have linked immigrants – especially dark-skinned immigrants – with terrorism, violent crime and drugs.

EXPLOSIVE BEGINNINGS