If a trauma ward is this exhausting to watch, imagine working there: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Emergency 24/7

See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred Source Published: 18:39 EDT, 8 September 2026 | Updated: 18:39 EDT, 8 September 2026 Emergency 24/7 (BBC2)Rating: 4/5 Almost the only thing missing was the bomb scare. On Saturday, Casualty's 40th anniversary double bill opened with a panoramic shot of Clifton Suspension Bridge, before swooping to the hospital.Emergency 24/7 used exactly the same device, except this time the hospital was Bristol's main A&E unit, Southmead. Like Casualty, which was an unusually gory episode, it featured lashings of blood, including a leg injury so gruesome that I had to screw up both eyes and open one just enough to see the screen.To be strictly accurate, a bomb scare wasn't the only bit of drama that separated Casualty's hyperventilating fiction from the real–life version. The paramedics of Emergency 24/7 also didn't have to escape from a submerged ambulance after plunging over a cliff.If they had, they might have found themselves on the earlier programme, Saving Lives At Sea. Tuesday night is rescue night on BBC2.There's no shortage of other hospital documentary series on TV, including Surgeons: At The Edge Of Life on BBC2, Ch4's 24 Hours In A&E and 999: Critical Condition on Ch5.All of them give us the sensation of being in the trauma ward or the operating theatre with the doctors. The urgency and the professionalism are tangible. Some cases create such a sense of involvement that the initial adrenaline rush is followed by a sense of exhaustion after the hour is over. Emergency 24/7 is set at Southmead Hospital, Bristol, and reveals the complex teamwork required alongside the everyday pressures to keep the department runningThese shows can put you through the wringer. If it's this exhausting to watch, I can hardly imagine what it's like to work there.Jayne, the first trauma team leader we met, had an advantage: she'd served as a medic with the armed forces in conflict zones. Any UK hospital, however fraught, must feel less stressful than being under fire.She ran a practised eye over the CT scans of a patient brought in after a head–on car crash. Tom, a 24–year–old chef, had a shattered knee with compound leg fractures and the arteries to his lower limb were severed.'It's a right old mess,' commented Jayne. That was an understatement — every doctor who saw the images seemed to suck in a breath between clenched teeth before giving an opinion. The universal opinion, unluckily for Tom, was that the leg needed to come off.To complicate matters still, Tom — who'd been driving the wrong way up a dual carriageway while off his head — was anaesthetised and unconscious. He was in no condition to give consent.At first it seemed the only chink of light was that the driver whose vehicle he hit, Amazon delivery man Oliver, escaped with scrapes and bruises. But life can supply strange plot twists.Tom was so shocked to wake up to the news that he'd lost a leg that he immediately swore off drugs — and he's been clean and sober ever since. This accident might have saved his life. HOLIDAY MEMORY OF THE NIGHT: Forget about heatwaves.The teams building sand sculptures, in the fun and lightweight contest Race Against The Tide (BBC2), were shivering on a windy Scottish beach under grey skies. Now that's the proper way to make a sandcastle.