The men of steel

This has been a big week for medicine on terrestrial television in Britain. On Sunday Channel 4 gave us vulval cosmetic surgery. On Monday Panorama investigated the NHS postcode lottery (see Review, doi: 10.1136/bmj.a1366), and on Wednesday BBC Four began Blood and Guts, a series about the history of surgery (see Review, doi: 10.1136/bmj.a1362). On Thursday Robert Winston presented SuperDoctors.

The working title of this series was Medical Frontiers, but after The Perfect Vagina and Blood and Guts that would have seemed dull. Indeed, running the words “super” and “doctors” together raised hopes that we might see colleagues wearing red capes and operating with kryptonite scalpels.

Mercifully, the programmes are much better than their dumbed down name. They take a hard look at the problems of introducing new technology in medicine, surgery, and—we’re promised—physiotherapy. Inevitably, perhaps, surgery was first, preceded in Radio Times by a gee-whiz article (headed …