A Young Doctor's Notebook and Other Stories

2012 • Ovation
4.6
102 reviews
Eligible
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Season 1 episodes (4)

1 Episode 1
12/6/12
Russia, 1917. Straight out of medical school, a young doctor is sent to a remote village in the middle of nowhere to run a small hospital. He meets his colleagues: overbearing senior midwife Anna, blunt junior midwife Pelageya and his intrusive auxiliary, the feldsher. His first case arrives in the middle of his first night: a peasant with a complicated labour. The young doctor soon discovers that the realities of his profession bear no resemblance to his training and learns that textbooks are no help to him now...
2 Episode 2
12/13/12
Slowly but surely, the young doctor abandons his dreams. His ambition to make medical discoveries is thwarted as he discovers that the locals possess a low cunning and his effort to fight a syphilis epidemic falters in the face of uneducated, hostile peasants. His spirit and sense of purpose remains unbroken, though, until he discovers how brutal day-to-day surgery can be when confronted with a gruesome and barbaric operation...
3 Episode 3
12/20/12
In spite of his success in the operating theatre, life in the snow-bound hospital begins to take its toll on the young doctor. His efforts to combat his feelings of boredom and isolation are defeated and he wonders how much longer he can last. Nursing abdominal pains and battered by "hours and hours of staring at snow punctuated by horror" and two harrowing cases, the young doctor is tempted by the allure of morphine...
4 A Young Doctor's Notebook - Episode 4
12/27/12
Balancing a heavy workload with a developing morphine habit, the young doctor finds it increasingly difficult to conceal his burgeoning addiction from his colleagues. After one humiliation too many, he resolves to make a clean start and a dedicated effort to combat the syphilis epidemic. But a blizzard-bound journey to visit a dying patient proves his toughest test yet as he confronts his worst fears about what he is going to become.

About this show

Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe star in this wry comedy drama about a young doctor's fledgling career as he begins his new life in a small, backwards Russian village. Based on the semi-autobiographical short stories by Bulgakov, set on the eve of the Russian Revolution, it tells the story of the young medical graduate's turbulent and brutal introduction to his practice, narrated by his older, more experienced self. A Young Doctor's Notebook is a fascinating, original and pitch black comedy with renowned international acting talent that will surprise and entertain viewers in a wholly unique way.

Ratings and reviews

4.6
102 reviews
Kuro Kumo
December 9, 2014
This is a very dark comedy (some parts not comical) some of the funny points derive from such inflammatory circumstance that I question almost as to why I find it funny. But the exchanges between the old and younger self are well done and written, as well the fiendishness of drug addiction Radcliffe plays an absolutely hopeless person on so many subtle and blantant levels that by the end I am surprised to think he would ever make it to the age that Hamm portrays, I could not have lived with myself.
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Jack Petry
October 16, 2017
This is one of my favorite TV Shows of all time. Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe portray the tortured mind of [fictionalized] Bulgakov on morphine perfectly. One of the greatest authors of the 20th century, one of the most brilliant shows of the 21st.
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Natalie Politis
August 10, 2017
My mother and her parents were from Ukraine and the Bolsheviks and communist killed my grandfather ,it's good but there is no humor of what pain and suffering my family went thrue ,Bitter Harvest is a excellent movie
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