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#Critic’s Appreciation: ‘This Is Going to Hurt’ Star Ambika Mod Is the Heart and Soul of the British Series

If absence truly made the heart grow fonder, AMC+’s darkly comic limited series This Is Going to Hurt would be heading toward Emmy domination by virtue of its premiere last June 2 — very nearly the earliest possible launch within this awards window.

Greeted with rave reviews when it premiered — I called it “unflinching” and “one of the best medical dramas to hit the small screen in years” — This Is Going to Hurt has gotten a little lost in the avalanche that is Peak TV, somehow even falling behind Amazon’s Dead Ringers as the season’s buzziest contender about the uncomfortably visceral nature of contemporary childbirth. Other than ephemeral word-of-mouth, the biggest conversational bump for the show came as part of March’s #BAFTAsSoWhite mini-controversy when co-star Ambika Mod was left out of the lead actress field for British TV’s big night. There seems to be some question regarding whether the BBC even submitted her in that field, but semantics aside, the fact remains …

No matter how you categorize her role (it’s probably more “supporting” than “lead” anyway) or the show itself (it’s a comedy, but so dark that it probably would have been called a drama if it weren’t “limited”), Ambika Mod gave a spectacular performance.

Sure, the show primarily belongs to Ben Whishaw, whose increasingly frazzled performance walks that peculiar line between nightmarish comedy and spiky, scathing drama. He’ll have you laugh and cry and, depending on your phase of life, reconsider your birth plan.

But Mod’s Shruti Acharya is the heart of the show, the conscience of the show, the one ascending doctor caught up in the chaotic world of the National Health Service whom viewers are desperate to protect. In Mod’s hands, Shruti never panders for pity or respect either from audiences or from Whishaw’s Adam, never makes Shruti come across as a victim or as a naive dilettante. She’s earnest and fragile and right on the edge of capable, to a heartbreaking degree. The show might spiral off into bleak nihilism without Mod, a remarkable achievement for a young actress with more writing and improv credits than major dramatic roles on her résumé.

The show’s sixth episode is an exceptional showcase for both Whishaw and Mod, as Adam experiences the posh and unhinged world of childbirth in private clinics and Shruti, unprepared for the task, faces a night of increasingly harrowing NHS chaos. The storylines carry equal weight because Whishaw and Mod do.

My biggest complaint about This Is Going to Hurt is that, in the end, the show should have done better by Shruti and by Mod. Emmy voters have one chance to give Ambika Mod the respect she richly deserves.

This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

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