Homework: TV Drama

Doctors
Series 14, Episode 212, Nessun Dorma
26 minutes 38 seconds
BBC (iPlayer)
Friday 15th March 2013, 1:45pm
Medical Drama
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01r8677/Doctors_Series_14_Nessun_Dorma/

There are two main plot lines running throughout this episode. The first is to do with a female doctor's (Emma) husband dying. Both her and her son (Chris) are sad about the fact that he died and from what I was able to gather he was paralysed and needed heavy assistance. They suspect that it was either suicide or euthanasia (assisted by his wife). A male work colleague brings her flowers and a card from the hospital and it seemed as though they had a bit of a relationship going on. After he leaves she breaks the flowers in distress. One doctor visits the people who are doing the post-mortem and he finds out that the male died due to an overdose of a drug that he prescribed under the orders of Emma. They class the death as "suspicious" and matters are passed to the police.  
The second is about a University student who is being kept awake by the person in the room next to her playing loud music in the early hours of the morning. She informs the security man who is slightly unwilling to do anything. So, she visits the hospital to get some sleeping tablets. However, with the doctor's advice that loosing weight can help insomnia not going down well with her she writes a story for the local online newspaper. The receptionist and doctor write a nasty comment on the post and accidentally send it instead of deleting it. The girl starts a campaign against the hospital and the doctor that she consulted with so the doctor went to see her. The doctor helps her by knocking on the door of  the girl's neighbour but they get no response - he was laying on the floor. It turns out that the boy was diabetic and turned the music on so someone would help him - he moved to the bottom floor so he could be helped when needed and the girl was old that a rugby team would be moving into the rooms next door.

An open narrative is found usually in continuous TV series like soaps and some dramas. The story has no clear beginning, middle or end - however, a cliffhanger ending can be used so the story can follow on next episode and the series can continue running.
A closed narrative structure is more common in films as they are one unique story. They have a definite beginning, middle and end and they are brought to a conclusion.
Doctors has an open narrative structure because it's a TV drama that runs every weekday. The narrative continued from a previous episode and was left on a cliffhanger for the next episode to be shown.

Representations of groups/individuals:

• Representation of age was shown - both Emma and Chris are both younger and perhaps have more to learn than the older characters who featured and helped them. Chris' mum helped him and the female doctor helped Emma. This conveys the older character's wisdom and dominance over the younger characters. Additionally, the receptionist was knowledgeable about the different  social networking sites and internet terminology - this would have surprised most younger people who tend to stereotype older people as incapable of understanding technology. 
• Representation of power/authority/status - the male security guard had power over Emma as he had the authority to deal with the noise complaint. 
• Representation of gender - interestingly, the job positions that the characters at the hospital held were very stereotypical of each gender. The receptionist and the nurses were female, the two main doctors were male, the post-mortem doctor was male and the security guard was male. Stereotypically, these jobs are what people would assume each gender fits into (e.g. a male doctor and a female nurse). The only person who contrasts this is the female doctor in the second plot line. 
• Representation of disability/ability - the boy with diabetes was unable to get the help of Emma despite the fact that she was capable of going and knocking on his door. Also, she has weight issues so there could be representation of the overweight/obese too. 
• Representation of ethnicity could be suggested because the female doctor was of a different ethnic background to the other characters.