Jed Mercurio quotes

Nowadays, you can't broadcast dodgy special effects and then put up a caption saying, 'Sorry, this is what the budget was.' You have to do it with high production values because the audience has been spoilt by the special effects on things like 'The X Files' and 'Independence Day.'

The doctor part of me recognises the light and shade of medical life, but the writer in me is more attracted by the darkness, perhaps because it is the road less travelled.

If you look at American medical fiction written by doctors, like 'The House of God' by Samuel Shem and 'The Blood of Strangers' by Frank Huyler, both have themes of cynicism and dysfunction running through them that you won't find in 'ER.' You find it in 'Scrubs,' but because that's a comedy, it gets away with it.

In my third year at medical school in Birmingham, I joined the Air Force as a medical cadet so that I was sponsored to become a doctor.

I believe that attributing flaws to medical characters makes them not just doctors but something more. It makes them people.

There's a classic medical aphorism: 'Listen to the patient; they're telling you the diagnosis.' Actually, a lot of patients are just telling you a lot of rubbish, and you have to stop them and ask the pertinent questions. But, yes, in both drama and medicine, isolated facts can accumulate to create the narrative.

In 'Bodies,' we had a lot of gore because it was a medical drama. The gore was authentic.

'Cardiac Arrest' was the first British drama to use a lot of medical jargon. 'ER' began the following year and was the first American drama to do that.

I believe that properly regulated research in stem-cell biotechnology will lead to many valuable improvements in medical treatment and that objections on religious or ethical grounds should be vigorously opposed.

Part of what motivated my writing was anger. I was angry that the daily misery of doctors, nurses, and patients was being trivialised into soap opera. We were made to feel bad because we were not perfect like our television counterparts. We were resentful that our patients did not get better as quickly as they did on telly - or at all.

One of the things I learned on medical drama 'Bodies' was that actors can't play ambiguity.

In 'Bodies,' we had a lot of gore because other medical dramas at the time had these hospitals where even a drop of blood seemed to be too much, which is clearly not what it's like when you cut someone up.