Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Gas gangrene, shell shock and flinty women: BBC One’s new Sunday night offering is no soother

The Crimson Field may be set during the First World War but the battlefields it focuses on are mental health and gender equality

Opinionated and recalcitrant: Oona Chaplin as Kitty Trevelyan [BBC Pictures] 
issue 12 April 2014

Sunday nights. What are they for? Eggs. Tea. Toast. Nerves about the week ahead. Something comforting on TV.  But comfort comes in many forms. For some, it’s twee life at Downton Abbey. For others, it’s the thrill of Homeland. With the BBC’s latest Sunday-night offering, comfort takes on a new guise: one that includes gas gangrene, shell shock, flinty women and war-damaged men. It won’t rock you to sleep.

The Crimson Field, BBC1’s latest six-part drama, took us to the support system that existed behind the front line during the first world war. It’s 1915, and young women from Britain’s upper and middle classes have been drafted in as VADs — Voluntary Aid Detachments — to nurse casualties from the trenches. There is period costume — starched powder-blue dresses, khaki uniforms — and a restrained set. So far, so comforting. We meet three young women who have journeyed to a field hospital near Étaples on the northern French coast, and who are promptly given a dressing-down by the glacial Matron Grace Carter, played by Hermione Norris.

Lara Prendergast
Written by
Lara Prendergast
Lara Prendergast is executive editor of The Spectator. She hosts two Spectator podcasts, The Edition and Table Talk, and edits The Spectator’s food and drink coverage.

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