Quacks

Quacks focuses on the extraordinary, daring and wild days of Victorian medicine. It follows the progress of four young medical pioneers fighting to make a mark on the world - beat their rivals - and save lives. Quacks is set in the 1840s, when medical science as we know it was still in its infancy, when doctors were just as likely to kill their patients as cure them, when they experimented on themselves and each other. The show explores an era of surgery when the operating theatre was just that: a theatre, full of spectacle and showmanship, where people would come to watch revolutionary procedures, or a surgeon try to beat his amputation speed record. It stars Mathew Baynton as a fledgling psychiatrist, Rory Kinnear as an arrogant showman surgeon, Tom Basden as a hedonistic dentist turned anaesthetist, and Lydia Leonard as a headstrong social campaigner. Rupert Everett plays the head doctor. (BBC)