When a nurse is fired for whistle-blowing, she has to take drastic action to provide for her and her daughter. Catherine Hardacre (Jodie Whittaker) was a good nurse in a crumbling healthcare system. However, whilst trying to carry out her duties with integrity, she rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way, and this eventually cost her her job. In a bid to prove herself, she steals the identity of an old friend and poses as a doctor in Edinburgh, away from her hometown of Sheffield, with the big question being this – how long can she survive in the huge lie she’s spun?
When I saw that the BBC was bringing out yet another medical drama, I rolled my eyes so hard that they nearly fell out of my head. I just wasn’t feeling it. Of course, my mum had said the words, “Oh, that could be quite good,” which basically translates to, “we’re watching that whether you like it or not,” so I didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter.
However, as much as it pains me to say it, mum did us a favour with this one. It was actually quite a bit better than I thought it would be, which has been a hard thing to say with new BBC dramas of late.
Doctor Who fans have a lot to look forward to if Jodie Whittaker is half as good as the Time Lord as she was as Cath here. You got a real sense of the desperation her character was experiencing, and this got better as time went by and the whole lie she was living unraveled. I liked the other characters that were placed into her story too.
Andy Brenner and Brigette Rayne, played by Emun Elliott and Sharon Small, respectively, both piled the pressure onto Cath and were two figures who I think really enhanced the story. They were well written into it, and that is probably one of the things that made this show as good as it was.
The characters weren’t the only thing that was well written. The actual storyline itself was very good and ratcheted up the tension nicely. There were so many things that could’ve gone wrong for Cath, and it was because of this that you could never be sure of when things were going to come crashing down around her.
The short run of the show (which consisted only of four hour-long episodes) massively helped this side of things. This allowed so much scope for when exactly Cath could be found because it would’ve been very easy to make a story to fit. It was nice for them to not drag the show out until viewers zoned out for once.
On the whole, I enjoyed watching Trust Me. It was a lot better than I had thought it was going to be. This was largely down to the wonderful lead performance, but also the terrific writing that went into creating this show. Not only did it make for great prime-time viewing, but with a bit of luck, it has marked a turning point for the BBC after a string of productions that have been less than brilliant. If you didn’t catch the show, I’d recommend you rectify that as soon as possible because it was well worth seeing.
