Airdate: Monroe

The dynamic James Nesbitt stars in the new six part UK series, Monroe, coming soon to ABC1.

Written by Peter Bowker (Blackpool, Occupation), the medical drama was one of ITV’s replacements for The Bill. It was approved for a second season last month.

Monroe is a brilliant neurosurgeon, a husband and a father. At work, he has the courage to perform cutting edge brain surgery operating on the very thing that makes us who we are. At home, he’s afraid to admit that his life is falling apart. To his patients, he is the most powerful person in the world: the man with the power to change their lives forever. Yet he is also human, and every bit as flawed as he is brilliant.

Nobody is more aware of Monroe’s flaws than Jenny Bremner (Sarah Parish), a glacial cardiac surgeon with little time for Monroe and his emotional approach to his patients. Bremner is a closed book, but with the help of his best friend anaesthetist Lawrence Shepherd (Tom Riley), Monroe is determined to unearth her sense of humour.

While Bremner’s trainees Andrew Mullery (Andrew Gower) and Sarah Witney (Christina Chong) are left to observe her operations from the sidelines, Monroe does all he can to encourage his weak stomached trainee Wilson and keep the ambitious Springer in check. Monroe’s registrar Sally Fortune (Manjinder Virk) has made it through her training to become his trusted right hand woman, but he isn’t convinced that his new recruits have what it takes. Along with Shepherd, the formidable theatre nurse Wickens (Liz Hume Dawson) and porter cum bookie Bradley (Thomas Morrison), they constitute Monroe’s dysfunctional hospital family. If he cannot repair his life at home, they might turn out to be his only family.

In episode one, when a young woman, Alison Bannister (Sarah Smart) is admitted with a brain tumour, Monroe has to help her to face a frightening decision: an operation could leave her paralysed or unable to speak, yet without surgery, she is likely to die within a few years. Does she want to survive if surgery might change who she is? And can Monroe get her through this crisis as his own life starts to spiral out of control?

8:30pm Saturday 27 August ABC1