Surgical Spirit

Party-loving medics take centre stage in a cheeky Victorian comedy

- Caren Clark, Sean Marland and Alison Slade

With its gory operations and gruesome diseases, there doesn’t seem anything particularly funny about Victorian medicine.

However, you’ll soon change your mind when you watch BBC2’s quirky six-part comedy Quacks, which centres on a group of ambitious young friends who are all blazing a trail within their own medical fields in 1840s London.

Written by Rev creator James Wood, Quacks follows the adventures of up-and-coming psychiatrist William (Mathew Baynton), cocky surgeon Robert (Rory Kinnear) and laidback dentist John (Tom Basden) who is experimenting with anaesthesia. Keeping a beady eye on their work is snooty Dr Hendrick (Rupert Everett), whose methods are far more old-fashioned.