The Hospital In the Deep End review: Season 2 puts celebrities back on the wards

‘Our public health service is under pressure like never before. And it’s the frontline staff who are bearing the brunt.’ Despite the alarmist – or realist – introduction, Season 2 of SBS’s The Hospital: In at the Deep End has a fine line to walk.

The formula remains the same: three celebrities go inside a busy hospital to see how the system is functioning. But if the place really is falling apart, a celebrity followed by a camera team is the last thing anyone needs wandering around.

The 2024 season featured Costa Georgiadis, Melissa Leong and Samuel Johnson at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital. This year now also features St Vincent’s Melbourne hospital, where former tennis player and broadcaster Jelena Dokic sees frontline medical services up close, while back at the Sydney St Vincent’s, actor Ruby Rose and food-related media personality Matt Preston are pulling shifts.

Day-to-day life in a busy hospital

Over the three episodes, each celebrity does time in a number of wards. Some areas of the hospital see them take on a more hands on role than others. Preston gets to serve meals in the acute geriatric ward. At the prostate cancer ward, he’s limited to talking to the medical staff and patients rather than getting in there with the actual surgery (probably a good thing, though by the way we see him smooth ingredients onto bread, he’s a dab hand with a knife).

Each of the celebrities has a connection with the health services. Preston is getting on himself, and has had a couple of older relatives with dementia; Dokic watched her much-loved mother-in-law die from lung cancer; and Rose had a serious car accident when she was 17. These connections aren’t so much about making the celebrities seem special as they are a reminder that pretty much everyone has a link with our hospitals.

Riding The Pitt’s wave

Medical dramas might be back in style at the moment, but the reality side of things has never really gone away, and much of what’s shown here will be familiar to fans of medical reality television (though without the amped up production of some of the commercial network’s efforts).

Here, doctors and medical staff explain their jobs, we get the backstories of some patients, and the rhythms and patterns of a shift on the ward become clear. Is there footage of surgical procedures? Just a little, as a treat.

As the opening voice over promises, there’s a certain level of background stress and pressure, especially on the emergency wards. Rose spends time in the Intensive Care Unit, where we’re told that one in 12 patients don’t leave alive. With such a high fatality rate, burnout isn’t just for hoons, with one in four current ICU nurses planning to move on.

For every patient who’s arrived just in time for treatment to make a difference, there’s one who gets there too late, whether through ignorance, ignoring symptoms or, on more than one occasion, simply being too far away from the hospital when things went wrong. We wouldn’t get so many hospital series and medical dramas if they weren’t an emotional roller coaster.

Watch the trailer

The resilience of medical professionals

While it’s clear that there’s more – a lot more – that could be done to give the medical staff the resources and help they need, this ends up being more about coping than crisis. Not to mention there are some problems that money alone can’t solve. While on the acute geriatric ward Preston is told that one of the bigger issues is that dementia patients are often physically abusive; having a drink bottle thrown at you by an old lady is something they just have to deal with.

Both Rose and Dokic speak movingly about their own experiences, and use them to connect with the patients they encounter, if only briefly. For Preston it’s a bit more personal, and he’s clearly affected by what he sees. Plus, he does make some tasty looking snacks, and that’s always going to get people onside.

But, as is always the case with this kind of show, it’s the patients who are the real stars. Early in the first episode, a man arrives at emergency with a dislocated shoulder. His family (wife and young kids) are with him, and it turns out the kids put his shoulder out while messing around. They’re in tears over hurting their dad and the dad’s in agony; the medical team put him under, put his shoulder back in seconds and it’s all sorted.

From disaster to feel-good story in two minutes. Would that all local dramas were that effective.

The Hospital: In the Deep End Season 2 premieres 5 March on SBS and SBS On Demand.

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